Lara Chamoun

Atoms as Frogs as Empty Spaces

She had been breathing for at least a few
years before the day she was born empty
spaces she went back to the pond the air
still heavy and the water still very still
and she looked into it and saw nothing
but her own reflection unclear and muddled
by non-ripples the tadpoles gone because
they'd all turned into frogs and left
when was that that was a long time ago
she curled in on herself wrapping her arms
around her knees a ball a circle a nonstop
egg she wondered if she'd ever hatch or if
she'd always be a shiny transparent eye-
an organ of blindness or an atom

Lara Chamoun is a high school student from Toronto, Canada. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The WEIGHT Journal, On the Seawall, The Shore Poetry, The Scapegoat Review, and elsewhere. She was a 2024 Adroit Summer Mentorship mentee in fiction and reads for Eucalyptus Lit.