The Chickens

One spring a friend incubates a clutch of eggs for you, and on a rainy Earth Day you bring home a baker’s dozen balls of yellow fluff and place them in a cardboard box near the wood stove. Your children gather around, holding the downy babies, listening to them peep, lying eye-to-eye with them on the floor, laughing hysterically when they poop. When the chicks sleep, they lie face down in the wood chips, looking dead, so you poke them and they wake up cheeping, which makes you feel bad and reminds you of how you used to wake up your own newborn children from naps because you were worried they’d stopped breathing.

I've been working my way through the "Writing" folder on my laptop, dusting off and finishing up old, neglected essays and sending them out into the world. A little piece about the sad saga of our chickens found a home at Mutha Magazine this week. If you'd like to read on, you can find it here.