It Would Be Nice to Poo Less Often, for Tim

There is a long, flat animal that is very sneaky. It blends into your floorboards and your radiators and your furniture. If left alone, it works very slowly. Like a sloth. But it has no hair and no miss in its armpits and it only has very skinny, short limbs. Over time, it will carry away single socks (the kind that lost their mate long ago and clang around in the dryer and the bottom of laundry bins). It will lift receipts and dust motes and soda cans and old bills and outdated technology. They will move through the air in bits of rooms when you are not looking and eventually be burried just below the roots of the flower patch in a garden 2.5 blocks away. It is very friendly. If you greet it, it will begin to remove more for you. Your sweat, bad dreams, your waste, your car exhaust, your nail clippings. All of your dreams. Your snot when you have a cold. The wear and tear on your sneakers. Maybe, when It thinks everything is smooth and calm enough, it will pause. It might tell you it's name. It might nuzzle you and ask for a rest. It will crawl under your pile of laundry. In the spring, it will be very small and you will have to buy some new underwear and maybe a new jacket. But you will breathe deeply and every square meters of your house will be bright and visible and will invite so much louder and deeper living.