Parakeet by Sara Dobbie

Sometimes, she thinks about biting his finger. Especially in the mornings, during that hour or two after dawn when she keeps her eyes closed, reluctant to leave the starry landscape of dreams and freedom. Thinks about what it would be like to clamp down on the thin index digit with the neatly trimmed nails, hard enough that he would pull back, startled. Then she could rush past him in a flurry and disappear out the nearest window.

    Sometimes, she feels guilty about this plotting, because he is kind, as long as she behaves. Tells her she’s pretty, so long as she keeps quiet. When he goes out, she sings, lets her true voice rise and carry as far as her lungs will project. Squawking, he calls it. As in “Quit your squawking.” She knows what they say about the hand that feeds you, but still.

    Sometimes, she thinks she loves him, that she doesn’t want to leave this place. How would she survive in the wild on her own?  Inevitably though, the biting plan creeps back like a dark shadow rolling in from the ocean, not that she has ever seen the ocean. And she becomes addicted to it. Replays the escape scenario on repeat. The thing she loves most is the idea that someone out there, in that unknown wild, might see her pass by and think, “How lovely,” with no need to possess her, no desire to protect her. What sweet transience that would be.

Sara Dobbie is a Canadian fiction writer from Southern Ontario. Her work has appeared in Mooky Chick, Trampset, Spelk, The Cabinet of Heed, Bandit Fiction, Ellipsis Zine, and elsewhere. Look for stories  forthcoming from Emerge Literary Journal, Change Seven Magazine,  Knights Library Magazine, and follow her on Twitter @sbdobbie.