Captive by Sarah Hamill

See Me Beautiful by Brandon L. Thompson

You tell me about the honey badger like I should already know. 

—The one that keeps escaping? Look! He climbs trees to the very top ‘til they bend over

the fence.

You show me a video of him vaulting up and out.

—Like a cartoon character?

—Yes. So, they cut down all his trees. But he used things in his enclosure to escape again.

—What things?

—Thing-things. Keep watching.

They take all his thing-things away. Still he escapes: Claws-over, digs-under, parkours- up-a-corner, clumps mud into a makeshift staircase.

Over and over he flees. Over and over zookeepers somehow manage to catch him. Over and over you watch this happen and I watch you watch.

I didn't use the internet like you did. You surfed late. Sometimes the white of your screen woke me up. I thought about telling you but remembered the time I asked you to charge your phone in the other room (—Come on, be present with me) and you didn't say anything but then slept at your place alone for a whole week (—Babe, you know I have trouble sleeping with another person).

So I let you thumb through Twitter in my (our?) bed.

I ask —How do you think they keep getting him back?

You didn't know. 

—Maybe the same way my aunt used to trap those feral cats. Keep watching.

I watch you watch and you don’t watch me watch.

You say —Amazing, right?

And I shove your phone all the way into my mouth and bite down hard over and over and over and swallow and hope that I become something you might want to keep.

Sarah Hamill is a writer from Edmonton, AB. Her work can be read online in Agnes & True and Funicular Magazine and in print in The Pinch. Sarah lives, works, and writes on Vancouver Island.