'Chickens Remember One Hundred Faces' by Janna Miller

Gather the fertilized eggs in your warmed pocket apron, one at a time. Gently relocate the orbs to your stomach incubator. You will feel them inside when they start to rock and peck, like undigested energy. 
Watch your belly until the birds have cracked though. Do not help them! If they do not have the ability to cleave their shell, they will not survive.
Pull them from your middle and warm them in your hands. Radiate as their mother.
Once dry, transfer them to the nursery, 98 degrees. Their mother from afar.
Only then: clean the incubator, discard the unhatched eggs.

Do This Last.

Sometimes one will hatch late, unwilling to leave the soft world of birth. Remember when you were brought online? The twinge of fresh ocular sensors?
The late eggs will struggle to peck and crack their shells.
One might pull through with a final moment of strength and pant in your hands, wet and droopy. He might slowly dry and feather while you hold him. He might stand and peck at your warmed enclosure. He might escape from your belly and run up your arm. Chirp near your auditory speaker.

Before you put him in the nursery, let him look into your lenses, run over your body, as a maze, as an exploration. Bring him to your cheek. Chickens will tell the flock of your face. 
We all have the same face.
Let him tell his siblings of their mother.

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Librarian, mother, and minor trickster, Janna has published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Shenandoah, Whale Road Review, Citron Review, Best MicroFiction, and others. Her story collection, All Lovers Burn at the End of the World is forthcoming from ELJ Editions. Generally, if the toaster blows up, it is not her fault.