Looking up

Looking up at night now,

I remember as a kid when

the mothership used to land in the backyard,

its lights obliterating the darkness.

I had a hard time then and

I still have a hard time now

believing

that ship and the scientists and explorers

came just to find me,

but they said they had, and

they said they came to let me know

so I could let others know.

They said they came to me and

to others like me so we could

know a different way of seeing

and

a different way of thinking

and of dreaming

and of loving

and of learning

and of discovering

and of accepting

and of understanding.

They said life would be hard

because the ways they would show me

were old ways

from beyond our way of understanding time

and

there would be many times when I would wish

they hadn’t visited me,

that they found another person in another backyard.

They told me they’d travelled distances

I couldn’t understand

to find the lights they saw

from an eternity’s breath away.

I always wanted them to take me up

and take me away with them

and

every time

I asked

they said they couldn’t.

I know it’s really that they wouldn’t,

not that they couldn’t.

Sometimes I wonder if they just needed to find someone

to make themselves feel whole.