Carly Osborne

Full Lungs

I was getting a flu shot and I was scared
of needles, and because the past is not curbed
by sense, both my parents were there in the room
as if I were having a limb removed, four eyes
pity-swollen and mine. I was nine and I wanted
African dwarf frogs, brown spotted aquatic
bodies with pink bellies and wide unblinking
eyes like the dolls I should have wanted
instead, the perfect bandaid for the wound of nights
without my older sister, with whom I no longer shared
a room. So I took a leap. As the nurse swept
an alcohol swab across my skin, I widened
my eyes in desperation and asked my parents
for an amphibian friend. We drove to PetSmart
before the soreness resolved in my arm. The salesclerk
with streak dyed hair taught us about frog lung development.
How tadpoles outgrow their gills
and adults must surface for air, slammed with the sudden
burden of breathing. The frog I picked was slim and sickly
and I called her Juliet, not after
Shakespeare but a vampire I saw on TV. Once
we set up the tank, my room was forever
swampy, electric-blue-painted walls sweating
in the frog heat. My mother said Whatever
makes you happy. LED lights made my frog’s chamber
look like everyone’s college dorm—I missed
my sister more. My ceiling rippled with light
when I tried to sleep. The filter’s unbroken
humming scored my dreams. Juliet started
hiding—I never saw her getting air—
and before long she went from missing
to gone. There was no slumber potion
on her lips, just death and the slow grip
of water. I flushed her. Gathered slimy rocks from her mock
streambed and stood anchored there, tepid
tank-water dripping from my stone-filled fists. I hadn’t planned
on this: the weight and the expectation that I would surface.

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Carly Osborne is a poet from Portland, Oregon. She is currently an MFA candidate at Western Michigan University, where she is grateful for the opportunity to teach English classes and write poems on her Remington typewriter.