The secret, I think, was this: time moves differently here. It doesn’t race; it ripens.

The bell on the goat rang once as the taxi pulled away. And then the summer month was over—but not gone. It had become a place I could return to, anytime I closed my eyes and heard the cicadas begin.

I packed the next morning. In my bag, a dried sprig of rosemary, a train ticket, and the knowledge that I had not escaped my life but had simply remembered what it felt like to live inside a single day.