Inlay

A chicken takes my order. Clucks as she hunts and pecks the right keys. Bock-bock-bock. She mentions there’s a deal on chicken nuggets, but I pass. At the window, I can’t stop staring at her gorgeous white feathers, each tipped with a line of black. She looks fluffy and fine as she pecks the paper money from my hands then the coins. Her firm, horn-like beak grazing the soft meat of my palm. I thank her. Another chicken with a huge pompadour uses her beak to close a twenty-piece box of nuggets. At the stovetop there’s a Highland cow with long brown hair bunched into a hairnet, flipping cheeseburgers and blowing the bangs out of her eyes. She moos that her patties are one minute out. There’s a russet potato with a dozen eyes wearing a paper hat on fryer duty, crisping up his unluckier comrades. The window chicken passes me my meal without passing judgement. On the road, I scarf my cheeseburger. When I get down to the rind, I bite into the webbing of my hand between my thumb and forefinger. I don’t notice until two bites in. All I taste are calories. --- Chelsea Stickle is the author of the flash fiction chapbooks Everything’s Changing (Thirty West Publishing, 2023) and Breaking Points (Black Lawrence Press, 2021). Learn more at chelseastickle.com.