Lara Chamoun

Houses creak, silence sharpens, hunger snaps,
pipes forget the gray hum, walls tap and throb;
you whisper your name to mirrors, shatter
your tongue like light splitting with water's crack;
your sound, gold-heavy, slips, a crown strung to
doll, tilting, sliding, falling, slipping, gone;
it grows in your gullet, iron, empty,
cutting like stones spilled raw in a mouthful;
screaming is a pebble wedged in your lips,
tearing your red throat, reluctant to cleave;
sound scratches ribs, waits for rage to eat, this
confession is the terror that tightens your chest.
So, so quiet: you are everything they say,
everything you’ve forgotten along the way.

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.