Lara Chamoun

Pet Wasp

I named him Paper and fed him sugar cubes.
Let him crawl up my stomach with tiny feet,
soft as threats. I punctured holes into a jar
under my nose and stuffed it with dandelions. 

He kept tracing the round walls like maybe
he was mapping a way out of my hand-made sky.
He tap-tapped Morse code on my wrist veins like
he wanted to fly. I ripped off his wings and cried. 

Here he is, shivering through my fingers,
alive and on fire like he wanted to love me
without being kept. 

I cracked the jar open:
Go on then.
I laughed and cooed because I knew
he would just crawl in circles dragging
my promises behind him. 

I put the lid back on and let him stay
because I made this unanswerable question.

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Lara Chamoun is a high school student from Toronto, Canada. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Toronto's Young Voices Magazine, The Diamond Gazette, The WEIGHT Journal and On the Seawall. She was a 2024 Adroit Summer Mentorship mentee in fiction and reads for Eucalyptus Lit.