Step off the front porch and lizards scamper. Leaves rustle as they flee. Some disappear into cracks in the steps. There are small ones and big ones with fat bodies, brown with pointed heads, some with a stripe running down their length.

Look out the glass double doors in the kitchen and you may see one lizard in particular. A small lizard, young I presume, likes to lounge or lay in wait on the screen doors just outside the glass. He strikes poses of elegance, holds them, motionless. One day, his body is hidden by the horizontal wooden strip partway down the screen. Just his tendril of a long tail is visible. It makes a not quite closed P, the end of the tail spiraling inside the half circle of the P. The P is upright, as if drawn in an ornate slender line for a special font. Always, the lizard is striking against the tiny grid of the screen.

Once, I say something to him, and he seems terrified—I can see the rhythmic swelling of his chest as his heart pounds.

I hope to see him on the screen sometime when his feet are not obscured, so I can observe them. They are unlike those of the chameleon (but usually green) lizards back home. His back feet have several thread like long parts that sprawl, like roots growing out of a sprouting potato. Perhaps they are made so that he can cling to anything, even in a hurricane.

One day, he positions himself so that I can better see his limbs. He has five appendages at the end of each leg, as if he has five fingers and toes. His hands are spiky stars, their parts splayed out against the screen. The fourth segment of each foot is much longer than the others. I make a whistly kissy sound and he cranes his neck and body, turning to face me, looking at me. I like the way he seems curious.