Lara Chamoun

Fish Hook Moon

 

1. It

 

…I

had been breathing for at least a few years before the day I was born

the day I was born was the day it was born when I stepped into a room that was white and clean and I saw it

a pink crying thing

through glass and wondered how this could be my brother because it looked like a pickled organ like a part of something living but dead and strange on its own

I remember many nurses walk-running and my father at my mother’s side and I wondered why not one of them was watching my brother because it looked so breakable and not quite formed yet

and I wondered why…

 

…and I wondered why later they celebrated that incomplete thing while I was right there and filled up the room completely as family I didn’t know piled blankets and cardboard books and stuffed animals with button eyes in the entrance of the house

and I wondered why my stomach hurt and why my cheeks burned as much as my eyes when they asked if I was jealous because jealousy was an incomplete thing

but I could walk and run and say I love you with words that carried weight

and I wondered still why they were all cooing over the pink wailing blob it didn’t make sense it didn’t seem fair and

I remember a few months ago I started kindergarten and brought home a gold star sticker for telling a really good story and I stuck it to the fridge and my parents hugged me and said I was the most special little girl in the world

I wondered later on my birthday when the presents and the cake were all mine if maybe the incomplete thing was thinking the same things from its place in the high chair and felt a bit bad that it was trapped so high up

I didn’t like feeling bad so I asked it if it was planning to fly away and when it looked at me funny and I laughed a bit meanly and said that that would be a good idea except a little thing like it would be too scared to fly

and then I felt bad again so I gave it my little cardboard book about the planets to make it whole and I wondered how incomplete it was to just stare at it with wide eyes until I saw it looking up and tilting its head

and I noticed it was looking out the window at the sky of our small town and

I puffed my chest a little because I taught it what a planet was

 

…it had been breathing for a while before it began to move and when it did I thought it was a fish flopping back and forth and back because it wasn’t pink anymore but I didn’t think I could call it a whole little boy

once I stepped into the hallway to see it putting its whole weight into snatching a ball that was actually supposed to be a globe and also mine

except that I tossed it aside because it seemed like nothing

but I wondered if maybe that was wrong because the fish-boy on the floor looked at it like it was the whole world and seemed to flinch when it stuttered to ask me to pass over the globe

because it called the globe a ball

it was the word it knew and it was horrifically wrong because he saw that it was so much more than the Earth

when I handed it the ball it paused for a moment with wide eyes and stared at it and squashed it a bit

it was its first word and it wriggled like an eel shuddering when the word came from its mouth jagged but slimy and shiny too

so shiny that our parents heard it from another room and rushed into the hall and begged to know what it said

tell us what your brother said tell us now tell us he said something finally tell us now

and of course I didn’t because its lips were pursed and its eyes were wide as if it had just coughed up a knife and it looked like it was hurting

and of course that didn’t stop them from shaking it as it flopped back and forth and back in their arms without saying a word at all

and of course they nagged for weeks after that but I shrugged because getting it to say the word again would be like trying to get a fish to climb a tree

 

…it was still breathing growing and moving but always choking on words because they wriggled like worms in its mouth

sometimes it succeeded in pushing them out but mostly it swam in air and I watched

from my own world of other worlds called stories and sometimes they spun in my head in circles and sometimes I wanted to tell the stories to it because all it did was roll or stare up like it was also looking for somewhere else

sometimes it half-sat next to me and listened with eyes like flying saucers when I talked about aliens and sometimes it would try to repeat the words but they came out broken and twisted and alien like pieces of a puzzle that just don’t fit together

and everyone around us except for it grabbed the pieces and shoved them together and pretended they fit and we built our home ou of sand like that

and I wondered if it would ever speak like me and I wondered when everyone would call it whole and at what point it would be a little boy like I was a little girl

and I wondered when it would find its voice and if it would sound like mine or if it would be alien and maybe that was why the fish-boy always looked up the stars and the planets

maybe that was why it lived in a different world

and I wondered if it was okay to doubt that thought on the nights we laid together on the grass in the backyard and it tickled us and the sky was sort of clear and we were together

sometimes it would point at the moon and make an almost-word sound and I would puff my chest and nod slowly and say yes that’s the moon

and then he would smile back because my brother was himself

 

1. comma

 

…I cried in school when my papers came back marked zero because my story didn’t end and I forgot punctuation

and I cry sometimes when the sun rises because there are no more stars to look at and the shadow of the sun at dawn is an awful black dot

and I think that on those mornings my brother agreed with me and I remember how he would look at a ball and see the whole world in his hands and I wondered when I told him stories if he understood that a circle has no end and that it goes on forever

 

…one day we went to a pond where tadpoles wriggled in the water and I watched them swim never stopping never ending just curving and bending and always moving and I realized that commas are like tadpoles they don’t end the story the just keep going and changing

and I watched them sad because soon they would be frogs and hop away but they would live, they would go on living,

oh, I breathed,

and I decided stories didn’t have to end, and I wondered if it was okay to doubt completeness,

and when I told my brother about the tadpoles, always moving, always changing, he looked at me with wide eyes, he looked at the sky in the pond instead of the tadpoles,

and when we crossed the bridge to return home, I knew we would be crossing it again,

said it looked like a comma

 

…and once I crossed the bridge and found him by the pond, watching the just tadpoles, and I knew something was wrong

he wasn’t making any sounds, his eyes were half-opened, unfocused, I felt the bridge creak beneath me, I thought I would fall through it,

I called to him, he didn’t respond, I ran to him, shook him, but he just stared like there was nothing to see at all,

I looked all around for something worth seeing right then, for help, to make him see again,

I didn’t want to go home because there would definitely be nothing to see there, I’d just be told that this was a side effect of incompleteness,

so I just sat next to him and watched the tadpoles swim in the water like little commas, and I wondered if my brother was still with me or if he had gone somewhere else,

then he turned to me and he looked at me with wide eyes,

he was still there, still whole, he reached and touched my hand,

 

• semi-colon

 

…and at some point the sky was overcast, the world was gray and muted, I couldn’t see the sky, I was in the kitchen rummaging through drawers looking for scissors when I found an old photograph, of us, standing by the pond, holding hands,

I felt pulled backwards,

but I couldn’t use a comma to separate these two parts, before and whatever this was, they felt too far apart, I still hated periods;

oh; I breathed;

two parts can be shoved together like pieces of a wrong puzzle even if they have nothing to do with each other; once the sky was blue; then I couldn’t see the stars and now;

I blinked

 

…we were at the park, he was running ahead of me; when had he gotten so fast and so tall; my heart pounded as I gave chase because I was scared; he was so fragile and breakable

he tripped and tripped and every time I rushed to his side, stopped breathing for a second, and he looked up at me with wide eyes; I breathed for a second

and then we kept running

 

…it had been a while since I had gone back to the pond; it looked smaller, darker, as if time had shrunk it; I wondered how on earth my brother had been able to see the whole sky in its reflections

…and then it was late at night and I was staring at the ceiling and no further; the darkness was pressing me into my sheets, so I went into his room where the light was always on and now the door was always shut

and I flicked off the lights, left the door open, laid on his bed which was unmade and would never be made unless I did it; I watched the five-pointed sort of stars kind of glowing on his wallpaper;

He hated the gift at first because he hated how all the plastic stars were the same;

he used to fall asleep holding my hand as if he was afraid I would disappear in his sleep; I felt guilty because sometimes I wanted to and I wanted to sleep in my own room and breathe

and in his unmade bed and with the door opened my breath caught;

just a shadow

 

1. colon

 

…it was strange to go back to the pond without him; the water seemed stiller, the tadpoles less lively; I stood on the edge staring into the depths that would come up to my ankles;

the only thing I saw was a muddled incompleteness and ripples where the tadpoles came up to breathe; I looked for something where they scattered and found nothing

and I remember the way he used to look at the pond, eyes wide, and I wondered what he thoughts of the tadpoles moving and if he found a way to connect scattered dots:

oh: I breathed:

the water paused and in the spaces between ripples it seemed to hold its breath

 

…and then I went back to the park and sat on a swing, plastic smile sagging, and it swayed back and forth and back as my shoes brushed the ground

I didn’t look up at all

the weak gusts of air that brushed me failed to push the swing up; my brother liked the swings; he liked the highchair; he liked the top of the slide and he climbed up backwards every time

there were a lot of laughing children; they laughed curtly and when they stopped laughing I thought of punctuation marks and how much I hated endings:

the children ran and tripped and I wondered how many children died like that

and I wondered when I looked into the eyes of kids much younger than me if it would be their last laugh, a period; I wondered how they could they could take that for granted

though I knew they couldn’t know they couldn’t they couldn’t:

I was angry: I pumped my legs to make my face face the sky hold its breath

 

…my brother used to hate the rainy day library, so I visited it: it was hard to make him hate anything

and that made me feel like I had all the answers as he sat on my lap and waited for a story, because I knew all the books inside and out, I knew every crack in their spines and he didn’t

I liked the library because I could tell stories, feel like I was teaching him, stay away from the rain; he hated it because I knew those stories, inside and out, and I could tell them outside in the rain while he waited with wide eyes for circle shaped gaps that meant the sun and other stars

I liked to have all the answers and I wondered if I could find a way to connect them, create the ones I wanted, find them hidden in the spaces between the stories like smiles and and reflections and living

and in the moments of silence where we held our breaths:

…I sat in the grass in the garden and laid back: it was raining

the sun was setting and weighed me down and made the air thick and hard to breathe

I wondered if behind the cloud curtain the sunset looked like a blaze, because right then it looked like ice cream melting on a sidewalk: I felt the loss

 

1. dialogue

 

…it was strange to see the house full of people again; the same faces, the same voices, but now they were celebrating him, the fish-boy, the pink slimy organ

my brother the perfect high schooler with perfect grades and shiny teeth and hair slimy with gel and perfect;

everyone was praising him, congratulating him, hugging him, beaming

a few even left presents in the entrance

while I stood in the corner feeling the ticklish burn in my stomach and cheeks and I wondered if anyone noticed me or saw how incomplete I felt now that

the room revolved around the son, not the daughter

when I went to find our picture by the pond I noticed that his test on the fridge covered a little gold star sticker and I wondered

 

…at the dinner table everyone was talking about his potential; I picked at my food because my stomach was heavy from their speaking

they asked him questions and he answered, his voice steady and clear and

“What about you, what are you doing now?”

“I’m, uh, still figuring things out and”

that’s what I thought, they said without saying and I held my breath and

“Remember when he was a slimy fish boy and couldn’t even say ‘ball’ and”

my voice came out slimy like I spat the words, so shiny that everyone turned to me and my brother looked at me with narrowed eyes and

jealousy is an incomplete thing; they said without saying

 

…it was raining, I was at the library and I found him hunched over a table, books spread before him:

wait what

“Hey, why are you here,”  it was some sort of accusation and I spat it and it was slimy and shiny and

“Studying, what does it look like.” It was not a question: his words were sharp and clean like a knife he polished well

it took him so long

I flinched

“You used to hate the library,”

“People change. I’m not a kid anymore.”

“You think you’re better than me now, because you can talk and because you’re smart,”

“I’m not trying to be better than you. I’m just trying to be me.”

He was always the calmer one, always: ‘always’ made me a little less angry

“And being you means forgetting who you are; forgetting me,” something was rising in my chest in my throat and it was forcing the words out and

“I’m not forgetting you. I’m moving forward.”

“Forward: you mean away from me but you wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me and remember I’m the one who helped you speak”

His eyes narrowed further: “I’m grateful, but I’m not your project. I’m my own person.”

“You don’t need me anymore,” I spluttered like I was swallowing water and “you’ve got your books, your grades, your future,”; I was drowning; then

“I’m not living in the past.” He held his breath like he was asking me for something

“Please no that’s like asking a fish to climb a tree I love you”

“You’re selfish. This isn’t about you. I have a right to my own life and my own choices. Period, end of story.”

Oh, I breathed and every word was a dagger and no no no why did I teach him so well to polish knives

so he that he wouldn’t cut himself

that’s why

but now his hands would be bloody bloody because I’m sure I was being stabbed

and I sputtered a little like a fish-girl out of water because he was right

“You need to leave,” said the librarian as the rain pelted the windows, punctuating us

 

…we walked home in silence and I trailed behind him just like I used to make him do when I didn’t want people to know he was my brother

and I couldn’t breathe

 

1. parentheses

 

…I had been breathing at least a few years before the day I was born when I stepped into the room that was white and clean and saw the pink crying thing through glass and wondered how this could be my brother because it looked like a pickled organ like a part of something living but dead and strange on its own

 

…I was born with him and I don’t remember anything before that

and now I’m talking to you because you need to understand, I need you to understand, without him I’m nothing, incomplete, and I don’t know how to be

so I’m just going to lie down in the little pond under the bridge

and what

oh (when did I get here)

he’s not here and I can’t breathe and air is thick and sky is heavy and my chest is being crushed

(the water is rising and the rain is pouring and I’ve slipped and I wonder if the pond will swallow me whole)

And I’m screaming but you can’t hear it and I can’t hear my thoughts and I’m shaking and flopping and thrashing like a fish caught in a net like a fish out of water and I can’t find my way to the surface because there is no surface

(he’s calling, come back)

I grab my stomach and force my knees together and I force myself into one piece and jam all the parts that don’t fit together into the glasshouse that I am

we haven’t built a sand castle in a while

(please, he’s screaming now, come back, he can’t see in the rain)

and the rain is making me crumble and I can’t see the bridge I can’t see anything but water and it’s pulling me down and my lungs are burning and I think this is what it feels like to die

(it’s not just the rain, the bridge is wet with me)

I reach out and there’s nothing to hold onto, no commas, no semicolons, just water and its slipping through my fingers and I’m sinking

sinking

(he’s there, I see him, his hand reaching for mine)

sinking

(he’s crying why’s he crying)

I feel like an anchor I’ve always wanted to be an anchor sinking

(the bridge is wet with tears, not rain, never rain, always tears)

I can’t breathe, I can’t see, I can feel the rush of water in my ears and I’m sinking

(he’s pulling me back and reeling me in and)

I’m flopping like a fish and slippery and

I take the bait I take his hand (when did that get there) and wait what

why does it hurt to breathe

oh, I’m breathing

(my parents shook me when we got home and I didn’t say a word and neither did my brother

it’s hard to explain how a teenage girl drowns in ankle deep water breathing air)

 

• ellipsis

 

…he was so small to me when he said his first word without stuttering, and his eyes lit up like the stars; he looked at me like I’d just given him the whole universe

we were in the backyard, the grass soft beneath us, and I pointed to the sky, the dark dotted with tiny ellipses, not ending: revolving; waiting to be told and I told

him about the planets (again) how they spun in circles (again) never stopping, always moving (again): my words looped…

“Ball,” he had said, his voice open to question, but it rolled off his tongue without struggle this time because he knew that I knew what it meant:

a planet, a world of its own and

we something bigger and infinite with a lot of potential, just like us, and

(it’s late we should go inside) but I still have a story to tell him…

so not yet

 

…he was drifting in pages that with so much gravity they were pulling him down towards this ink and his eyes away from the stars

he told me that it wasn’t true and that this was about not wanting to be a boy stitched together by other peoples’ stories and about being invited with his classmates for sleepovers and fishing trips with their dad who owned guns

he liked to catch the fish and hold their squirming lives in his hand, be the one to give them back to the water; he liked to play god and choose mercy

I told him that I like stargazing too, he said

“I want to get a scholarship to study astrophysics.”

A ticket to elsewhere, where people wouldn’t know about fish-boy, just him and

(here I was rejected from every art school I applied to because I wrote strangely in circles without periods)

…the day he came home with a letter in hand, the words scholarship and acceptance tried to attack me and pull me forward but I just backed away and tried to hide it

“Why didn’t you tell me”

“I need to move on.”

“I’m happy for you”

“Really?”

“I love you”

“I know. I love you too.”

 

…my birthday is on the day I started breathing at some point at the dusk of summer, right before school begins, and I used to whine and whine because going to school felt like the worst birthday gift in the universe

but this year again I wouldn’t be going to school, I’d be going to work as a cashier at the McDonald’s around the block, and I’d sleep in the next day in the same bed I’ve had since I was six and I’d do it again and again and

my brother was leaving tomorrow morning and I didn’t want to be awake for it so I’d given him one of my presents instead, some going away gift, some book about the stars I thought he’d probably like better than me since he liked books so much lately

I saw him barely notice it, his eyes fixed on the town sky, one last time: the university was in the big city; there weren’t going to be many stars there at all and that felt good, like I was keeping them all for myself,

if I had them all here he’d have to come back but

he was packing and

“Remember when you were a slimy fish-boy and couldn’t say ball,” I said to bait him and pull him back and make him see me

he looked right through me like

“No, I don’t remember, I was too young.”

I felt like pieces of nothing scattered in between stars, like some thread, some thing…

oh…I breathed…

 

…I thought about the spaces between the stars like moments where I wish I could throw a few periods, to drown them and then continue like…

(at some point that night my brother had slipped a book into his suitcase)

 

• empty spaces

 

…I went back to the pond, the air still heavy and the water still very still and I looked into it and saw nothing but my own reflection, unclear and muddled by ripples, the tadpoles all gone because they’d all turned into frogs and left

when was that, that was a long time ago

I curled in on myself, wrapping my arms around my knees, a ball, a circle: a nonstop egg

I wondered if I’d ever hatch or if I’d always be a shiny transparent eye-like organ of observation or an atom

I remember that once someone who is my little brother told me that everything is made of atoms and most of an atom is empty space

 

…He’s somewhere, looking up, looking for stars behind lights so bright that somehow they make the clear sky cloudy. He’s had his eyes on the future for a while now, he’s been reaching for the stars for quite some time. Maybe since he started breathing. Maybe because he wasn’t very good at walking on the ground, on sidewalks, without seeing the sky in all the after-rain puddles.

He remembers that once his sister taught him that frogs don’t leap very often at all and that their eyes are always fixing the sky, waiting for a fly that might not come.

Somewhere tadpoles are wriggling and the favourite toy ball you lost and forgot about still exists Somewhere

 

1. 0. erotema

 

…and in the meantime, if you forgot, why are you still looking for it?

 

 

 

 

Lara Chamoun is a high school student from Toronto, Canada. She is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Bleeding Ghosts (Cathexis Northwest Press) and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, LIT Magazine, The Shore Poetry, Queen’s Quarterly and elsewhere. She was a 2024 Adroit Summer Mentorship mentee in fiction and reads for Eucalyptus Lit.