Hi everyone. So, I lived with my ex-partner, Dan, for ten years, and about five years in, I realized this relationship was not for me. This isn't a story about why I stayed for another five, that's a whole different kettle of fish. This is a story about how our neighbor, Hank, gave me some chickens from his farm. Hank was kind of a dreamboat, really handsome. He was great with animals and really talented with growing things. I admired that about him because I could barely make weeds grow, and we were living on a farm, in Arkansas. I developed a bit of a crush on Hank, from afar, despite the fact that he was married and had a little daughter. It was a harmless crush, right? Like, this fantasy I had spun in order to distract me from the fact that my own relationship was really starting to show itself for what it was. Which was, in a lot of ways, controlling, and isolating, and really unhealthy. But, that's a different story.

Dan was my mentor, and when I met him, he too, had a wife, so maybe this was some strange pattern in me, some desire to take something that belonged to someone else. Either way, I had these chickens now, and I had to care for them and I am not someone who cares for things. I had no pets growing up, I was totally unused to animals and I also had no maternal instincts. But I loved those fucking chickens, and I gave them all names. Elizabeth Taylor, Claudette Colbert, Barbara Stanwyck and Katharine Hepburn. Elizabeth Taylor was my favorite because she was mean and dark and beautiful and she would peck at my shoes every time I came out to feed her. But I liked what they represented, for me.

I liked that with these chickens I could prove myself as someone who could take care of things, who was a good person, who didn't just steal husbands and write bad poetry and live on a farm in the middle of nowhere with a man twice my age who didn't really love me. It was escapist, this fantasy, like the fantasy I had of Hank running away with me, taking me out of there, to somewhere where we could build our own farm, our own rural life together. This was sick, right? I feel guilty just talking about it, about even fantasizing about it, but it was the only half-reasonable way out of where I was.

One night, I came home and the dog was barking at the back door. I went running out and a fox had gotten into the chicken coop that I had built for the girls. There were feathers everywhere and they were all clucking and making that scared chicken sound, skittering around. They were all fine, except Elizabeth Taylor. The fox had gotten her, and Dan had come running out behind me when he heard me screaming. She was in bad shape and I wanted to take her to Hank because he was good with animals. He'd know what to do, or so I thought. But Dan was smarter, or crueler, I don't know which, and he grabbed her up off the ground and just snapped her neck. In this like, twisting motion, like he had done it a thousand times before. And she was dead.

It felt like a betrayal, like he had betrayed me as much as I was betraying him by even superficially wanting this other man. Hank had given me these chickens to take care of, right? So obviously Dan had no investment in them, obviously he ... resented them, even. I don't know. Maybe I deserved it. Maybe I wasn't meant to care for anything that was so delicate. And I couldn't take care of anything, I couldn't protect anything, all I could do was live this life, in this house, with this man I didn't love and who didn't love me. All I could do was hunger after these men who were icons of stability and strength, but I didn't have the fortitude to build anything with anyone, I just wanted it already prepackaged and delivered to me. Part of caring for things is building them from the ground up, and part of caring about things is the fear of loss, maybe. Dealing with it. The worst case scenario. But maybe I could have done a better job at protecting what was precious to me. It was wrong of me to wreck Dan's marriage. It was wrong of me to fantasize about Hank, to want him when he already had someone and so did I. But mostly, it was just wrong of me to not leave altogether.