I dive headfirst into the off-white abyss of a recycled-paper page. The possibilities, like seagulls, are limited by my imagination’s glass walls. As I’m sailing the waves of creativity, I feel seasick and grab hold of a line—a college-ruled line or a through-line—and as I pull, the thread unravels the page. Tree tendons, sawdust strips, shredded love notes, blacked-out bank statements and secret wills all appear on my desk—words chopped, sliced, and diced, as if by a cruise line sushi chef. I press the alphabet bits onto wax paper, bake them in the oven on 375℉ until they shrink into a keychain-sized cat. I can’t say if it's dead or alive.

A turkey bobbles through a clump of trees. Frightened, he fluffs into a full strut, showing off his feathered, heaving chest, to ward off the impending danger: a robin worm-hunting, oblivious. Inside, my two-year-old daughter pecks my arm. I’m not afraid, she says. Of what? I ask. She flits off to play with a wooden woodpecker, oblivious. I’m nestled in that night when an untamed thought roosts in my head: WHAT IF MY HUSBAND DIES? How would I provide? How would I survive?

On my body, feathers grow in place of hair, a beak breaks through between my cheeks, my feet become claws. I’m transformed—fully fowl. Finally, I stretch my wing and pat the warm lump next to me. He’s there. Breathing in-and-out, in-and-out, oblivious. I pet my wings, my down-feathered belly, my scrawny legs, trying to soothe my ruffled feathers, trying to calm my hummingbird heart, trying to tell myself it’s true: I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid—not believing a single note from my avian throat.