What Needed No Name

While the regional list still said twenty, one was already walking the hydroid — parasite on a feeder that hosts parasites, dirt and tiny guests already nested, an ecosystem inside and inside again with no Latin required for the walking.

Another wraps a leg and combs it clean. Long curved spines wait on the lower legs for a mouth that will call them hairy feet. Red eyes. Three lips. Sensory tendrils. The ovigers finish the pass before anyone reaches for the binomial.

Nightmare fuel stands at the door. Biodiversity gap. Names so climate can be measured. New species once the Latin sits. I am not taking those rooms.

Looking stops earlier — on the walk the list had not counted, and on the animal already combing itself.

Leftover is both. I take the grooming: the walk still borrows the wrong count for contrast; the comb was complete without a word for feet.