Gone are the days of who-you-were—
a flat brown whip, bulb-bodied,
flicking through algae and warm muck-water.
You are on the banks of who-you-will-be.
Gossamer tail and skin-flap gills
give way to budding lungs,
limp limbs that stiffen by the day.
The pond has shielded you
from turtles and ducks, the pink throats
that swallow new birth, but it is time
to shake off what is dead
and step into raw wind, open sky.
Your body may absorb your tail,
your lungs may swell and lead you
to land, but don’t think
that transformation only happens once—
that all life is not shedding and sprouting,
a stumbling through the cold.
Evangeline Sanders is the author of Flight of the Quetzal (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her work has been published in Delta Poetry Review, Littoral Magazine, Sky Island Journal, and elsewhere. She isn’t a hardcore frog fanatic but she thinks they’re cute and does enjoy petting them on occasion.