CATCH

1st Prize Retreat West Micro Fiction 2023 & shortlisted for The Bridport Prize 2022. 

You talked about space, so I bought a one way ticket to Vietnam.

One evening, I ordered octopus in Con Dao and thought about our first night together - turbulent and tangled, your long limbs spilling over the edges of my tiny bed. ‘Like wrestling with an octopus’  I’d said.

You didn’t laugh.

I speared another tentacle. My phone made a noise. It was my mother: ‘Pls don’t eat octopus over there. Radio 4 says they’re sentient beings’.

I laughed and picked the burnt, black scraps from my teeth.

Later, I hunched over the toilet and wondered if it was a sign that I was allergic to you. It frightened me, so I thought about other things, like how different it might be if we learnt to communicate.

That night, I dreamt of the sea, a trawler, a captain.

In the morning all I could taste was Love Hearts.