hamster quar

by Ellie Zupancic
Visual by Veronica Hernandez

friend is whining in my DMs 
trying to figure out if she should buy a 300$ top
in quarantine and i’m like gurl you’re probably saving 
money not eating out bc of quar right? either way 
i don’t care what sort of freedom my friends buy  
with their money, not my business and can’t be made my business 
even in writing this i’m kind of like that shitty hamster 
finnegan my friend bought in HS and hid from his parents
in his bedroom closet-office like a pre-quar quar, fucker 
was always making laps at midnight and eventually died (i’m 
mostly kidding he was pretty cool). then when we got bored a few years 
later in college we went to petsmart and did the same thing again lolllllll
so we named the collegiate hamster webster and am i wrong or
is that on the same fucking level as the name finnegan ??
i also had a pet hamster in middle school that killed himself one morning 
found him hemorrhaging on the wooden floor downstairs & was so shook 
about the fact that he threw himself down every single stair! i stuck 
his tiny body back through the metal cage walls and went 
to school and my friend was like, ellie, i hate to break it to you 
but he definitely jumped from the balcony. now that i think about it, 
it was probs when i learned about agency for the first time. 
things keep repeating themselves, or maybe i just never 
remember the things that happened only once so maybe 
life evens out maybe if i wipe my roommate’s beard 
shavings off our shared bathroom counter 100 
times in this life i’ll be rewarded later at age 30 with skin that stayed
supple despite all odds. like in quar i’ve been skating 
with my friend a lot and only speaking in a british accent
especially when i fuckup and i think it might be a character 
deflection or maybe a clinging to autonomy