There is something a little sad, underneath the comedy of it, in what that misreading reveals about the reflexes I had built.

Presented with a document that was, on its face, purely hopeful, a list of lovely places a woman wanted to go, small mills tucked in green valleys, a plan for making the most of an unwanted six-month exile far from home, I did not see the hope in it at all.

I saw a scheme.

My defenses were so thoroughly tuned to detect threat that they converted even an object made entirely of wishes into an object of menace.

And I think a lot of us, if we are honest, walk around with defenses tuned a little too high in exactly this way, primed by old hurts to read the hopeful thing as the dangerous thing, to see the wish list as the crime map.