puddle

wood, found objects

2023

“The rains poured so hard they flooded an entire street—so much that you couldn’t walk around it or swim across. From edge to edge, a puddle grew so vast it was like a sea. In spring, it overflows; in winter, it freezes to ice. And in autumn? Just a puddle. A big one.
Its edges turned mossy and sprouted reeds, and soon carp the length of a forearm took to it. People began coming there to fish. Water striders scurried from one side to the other, trying to measure it—never quite managing, till they wore themselves out.
A year passed, maybe a bit more, but life went on—we got used to it. And so we started calling that puddle ‘the sea,’ since we’d already forgotten what the real sea even looked like.”

The diary, 2023

OLYA MAKHNO | ALEX CHUMAK