A New Animal for the Tango, for Catherine

This is a very soft animal. Like mist like breath like when kids in winter pretend to be dragons. It clings to walls. Or the springs of futons. It stirs when it hears gaps. Not silence, but gaps. Breath that takes longer than usual, skip or (de)crescendo in the music, the smell of syrup on pancakes. It spreads out from the miniscule bubbles in the paint and it swells into newer spaces. The ones between your toes between jawbones. Tickling your eardrums. And if you nod, it will irradiate your joints. It will hold up the air in the spaces where you step and it will whistle a whole orchestra into your ear. It loves to run around you, dance around your shinbones, step gently out of bed in reckoning, or late into the dim spaces tucked into the night. This animal you can call Arradeon, if you want it to come. It has a collar with your address and no leash. It lived on celery and blacklight and it will not bother anyone else. It will just say hello to you. Welcome home, young thing.