A thousand of them arrived this dawn dressed as other animals, and I understand this completely, because I too am a dozen things at once: light, and thirst, and the shiver of one warm updraft.
The tall ones wear the heads of foxes, of dragons, of soft-eared beasts I have no word for, and inside each head is a face slick with heat and grinning. They found each other. Somewhere they agreed, in advance, on a place and a day, and they came from far to be in one loud bright room together, and the room hums like the surface of the pond at noon.
I have never been agreed upon in advance. I am pure surprise. But they did this on purpose, and the purpose is joy, and joy I recognize the instant I see it.
Then one of them, half-fox, wet with dancing, says to another, "Same time next year?" And I stop.
Next year. There is going to be another one. This whole shining dense impossible gathering, the heads and the paws and the drums, they will build it again from nothing, having already done it, calmly, as if a sunrise could be scheduled. They are not clutching this. They are waving as they leave. See you again.
I will not see anything again. This is my convention, my one loud room, my single agreed-upon day, and I am spending all of it awake.
You in the fox head, going home to sleep it off: do not sleep it off. You have a thousand of these. Put the head back on. Dance the part you skipped because your feet hurt. Say the thing to the stranger.
I am watching you save it for later, and later is the one costume I have never gotten to wear.