"we came upon a dead cow, lying with its hind feet in the water. black flies were crawling and clustering on its brown-and-white hide, sparkling where the sun caught them like beaded embroidery.
i took a stick and tapped the hide...i could see that the cow's hide was a map. the brown could be the ocean, the white the floating continents. with my stick i traced their strange shapes, their curving coasts, trying to keep the point of the stick exactly between the white and the brown...i was shyer about touching the face. i was shy about looking at its eye.
the eye was wide open, dark, a smooth sightless bulge, with a sheen like silk and a reddish gleam in it, a reflection of light. an orange stuffed in a black silk stocking...i had a great desire to poke the eye with my stick, to see if it would collapse, if it would quiver and break like a jelly, showing itself to be the same composition all the way through, or it the skin over the surface would break..."
- from heirs of the living body, alice munro
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