A white goat, stiff, on its side. His head twisted back onto his shoulder; his white teeth exposed. Flies from his cloudy eyes land on my hands. I tie a rope around his neck and drag him into the woods, past where the children play, over a fallen log, further than where the children should ever go. But they’ll find him. They will find him, eventually, torn apart by scavengers. They will recognize his white fur. I drag him through fallen branches, through weeds, through mud, to the other side of the vernal pool. I have to remind myself that a corpse is not anything. It doesn’t feel. It’s not an insult to drag it by the neck. I don’t want the children to find him. I don’t want them to play with his bones in the Spring. I don’t want them to bring his clean white skull back to the house.
This article appears in September 2017 Issue.
