Waking in the coop is the worst part of the day, the warm sleepglow moments where dread and hope melt together and we know, we know, who among us is ready but we are not ready yet to know. We feel it, in the preening of our feathers. But the cocks scream sunrise and we wake.
We pick the hay and morsels of mud caked to our coats, all with an ache in our base. A few loose titters and squawks. None clucking yet. The air is cold but the haybeds are still warm, we are pressed together in collective life, except the Brokebeak who cranes her head all the way back, tucked behind her wing, neck strained almost to snap. The rest of us ache, and once we’ve pecked a few straws into place, we squat in our nests. Brokebeak pretends. We watch her squat but we know nothing will come of it, and we hate her for pretending.
We are grateful she is she and we are we, but there is no other way it could be. If she were we then we would still be we, and it would only be time before another of us were she. If not Brokebeak than Whitecoat, or Greytail, or another would wake and fail to lay. Then she would be she, and we would be we, and it would not matter who any was in particular at all. We squat. We feel the ache peak and constrict and suddenly we find ourselves mothers for the morning. Until the big fleshy fingers come to collect the eggs. In exchange, they will dump the feed, and we will forget about the eggs until the ache returns. Until then we are proud and hungry, and we know it is much better to be we, to be us, than to be she. And she looks so alone.
Grass brushes our bellies at feed time. Brokebeak eats last. She is not starved, all of us are well fed. Muscular, from all of our walking and flapping and stooping to peck. The dusty smell of earth after rain. A worm from the dirt, a delicacy. Muscular, bloated with muscle.
The cock’s plumage reflects the sun like metal. We fight for him; he fights for us. Except Brokebeak. He does not fight for her, but we peck and scratch and pull her feathers all the same. Fighting to prove to her, to prove to us, that she is not we, and we are not she. It is a relief, after the waking, to know for certain we are not she, but still we fight, and we watch. Soon Brokebeak will not be she, but she will not be we. She will simply not be. We are always looking for the next she.
They come for Brokebeak after feeding. They grab her by the neck. In a single swing, she flies in a circle, attached to rings of fleshy fingers. As with the others, there is a pop, and a loosening. The tension that we watched building inside her since she stopped laying is gone, slack. We wonder, where does she go, after this? But we do not wonder too much, for this is something she knows. And we have no desire to be she. And it is a good day, like all days, to be we.
JB Andre holds a Bachelors in neuroscience, a teaching degree, and is currently pursuing his MFA in Fiction at the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. He works as an admissions counselor and lives in Roswell, New Mexico, where his partner is studying medicine. His work is forthcoming and published in New Ohio Review, The Account, and Uncharted.