The happy place

When I was a kid, my neighbour and I found a goat carcass in the forest.

It’d been picked clean revealing the white skull which we brought back home to my grandmother

We wanted to show it to her

Apparently it was one of her dead goats she’d pulled into the forest herself,

And we’d pulled it back, (partially)

Probably it couldn’t be buried properly in the frozen grounds, and there was no room in the freezer

She really loved her goats.

I didn’t think about it being one of her goats, it was just a skull with horns and teeth

I don’t remember how she reacted when she saw it or why we did it, but I remember the pungent stench of death on my mittens

They threw them away