Sara Hills is the author of the award-winning flash fiction collection The Evolution of Birds (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2021). Her work has been widely published in anthologies and magazines, including SmokeLong Quarterly, Bath Flash Fiction Award, Fractured Lit, Cease Cows, Flash Frog, Fictive Dream, and elsewhere. Find her online at sarahillswrites.com.

Judge's comment:

The right frame is a powerful thing in a micro – what we want in this tight word count is to be shown a new angle on the quotidian – like the experience of seeing someone flirt with your mother. From this winning micro’s title, we are eavesdropping into a conversation between the narrator and Walt Whitman. This angle adds a frisson of voyeurism to the words we hear the narrator speak - “hollowed glen under my skirt” for example. This so subtly and cleverly creates a sense of disquiet in the reader, so when we read “furls and unfurls” with that beautiful imagery of trying to flap away, and then that stunning last phrase “still feeling caught in the beak”, we are also yanked back by the tether of traumatic conditioning. A story that tells you what it’s going to do while doing it, and you are still taken by surprise.