![]() The word sounds too formal for something as poetic as that, but you helped him anyway, observing and learning, displaying stuffed pieces by the roadside every weekend for curious tourists, garnering hunter trophies, accepting dogs and cats wrapped in blankets. It’s one of the only ways of stopping time. ![]() Taxidermy, he used to explain, is a way of preserving what is beautiful and loved. Out of everything, in your life with your father, you only struggled to love death. Blood and bones too, because life does not deprive itself of ugliness, and it does not care about anyone’s sensibilities, which is beautiful on its own. You started to love nature with your dad, all the animals and plants and rocks and sounds. On the way home, you read the horoscope out loud for him. It was only the two of you, father and daughter living in the little house by the forest, somewhat lost to the rest of the world, but fulfilled by the silent belief that they were above those who lacked an existence, and were dependent on the smoke and jobs of a big city. The memory brings a sad smile to your face. ![]() You always returned with a new treasure: a claw, a fang, the molted skin of a rattlesnake. Sometimes, you stopped by the highway shoulder to inspect some roadkill that was run over by a car or by life. Every week, you two drove to town inside the beat-up Brasília once owned by your grandfather, to do groceries and bring the damn newspaper. He used to say that he started to buy them solely because he needed some to pack the animals to put them in the freezer before working on them, but you know it’s a lie. It’s even more pathetic that you hoped to find some comfort in it. You stare at the blurry letters, thinking how pathetic it must be to read about your zodiac sign, whether it is because you were conditioned or used to it, in the same pages rolled around your father’s cold body, now exposed in its nakedness on the granite table top by your side. The daily horoscope has amber-colored stains where the newspaper met the humidity of dead skin. In sewing, the inside is always entrails. Aries: There is always an end to a ball of yarn, no matter how infinite the thread might seem.
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