By Valerie Virginia Vargas

I grew lovesick—and all I could do was eat flowers.
I started picking buttercups and dropped the buttons
on my tongue. Once I started I couldn’t stop.
I’d melt, then find myself near fences and meadows
with overgrown grass long after curfew, tea candles
and match sticks to guide me. I picked as many
as I could and hid them in my fur, behind my ears.
I split myself everyday just to know I could have them.
My fur was yellowing, I would hiccup and butter
would bubble from my mouth. The sky used to drop
nails on me and it stopped sobbing for a while.
My grandma started to notice my restlessness, she
watched me hop outside after dinner one day said,
¿digame mija, cuando vas a dejar de comer flores silvestres?
She even started to vary our meals: sprinkle Spanish
needles on salads and boil hojas de llantén for tea
but they weren’t buttercups. I grew hungry, nothing
tasted anymore. The ground was shaking again and
the marshes began to drought like my eyes and redden.
The sky cracked in half, I started to dig and dig and
dig and dig and dig and dig until the ground caved
in and my paws caught the water rushing in its mouth.

Valerie Virginia Vargas is a Venezuelan-American poet and printmaker from South Florida. Her work explores womanhood, ecology, and folklore. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Notre Dame. Her work can be found in Jellyfish Magazine and is forthcoming in TYPO Magazine.