No.
I stared in a mesmerized, can’t-look-away,what the hell is happening to meway.
She shouted something inaudible through the window, but it sounded like a threat. The chicken flapped again, zigzagged left, then doubled back like it was calling plays in a football game.
Fifi followed, weaving between buckets, hurdling a feed bag, hair bouncing like she was in an ad for some kind of rustic shampoo.
It should’ve been ridiculous.
Itwasridiculous.
And yet—
I laughed without warning or build-up.
It was just one of those laughs that came out of nowhere and caught me off guard. It even bent me forward slightly with the force of it.
It felt good to release a real one that wasn’t a polite exhale or a forced chuckle on a Zoom call.
This was agut-twisting, full-bodied laugh I hadn’t felt in… years.
I leaned my forehead against the windowpane, trying to catch my breath, still watching her attempt to corral a bird one-tenth her size with all the grace of a flamingo in hiking boots.
And I didn’t stop smiling.
Not when she finally managed to corner the bird near the compost pile.
Not when she stood up, triumphant, holding it under one arm like a football.
And not when the chicken pecked at her shirt and shescolded itlike it was a toddler throwing a tantrum at Trader Joe’s.
She was talking to it sternly and pointing as if the thing could understand her, and maybe, at this point, it could.
I couldn’t hear the words, but I could imagine them.
She marched it back toward the coop, head held high, chicken squawking like it was giving an exit interview.
And that’s when I felt it again.
Thatthing.
It scared me a little to feel that flutter in my chest like maybe I’d accidentally swallowed sunlight.
I didn’t come to Wisconsin for connection.
And for that matter, I certainly didn’t come for chaos, or for coffee that tasted like nostalgia, or people who smiled at you like they saw right through the armor you didn’t know was still showing.
I came here to unplug, breathe, and stop the bleeding from whatever part of me had gone numb and gray and tired in the last few years.
But now?
Now I’d just laughed at a chicken chase and felt something shift inside me like a door creaking open.
I hadn’t meant for that to happen.
I backed away from the window and set my coffee down. My face was still split in that dumb grin. One of those too-wide, too-rare things that made my cheeks ache in a way I wasn’t used to.
And I realized—
