Originally published in Planet Magazine No. 29 (March 2001).
Why do you stare down at me like that
as if all of you could fear one of me —
fear my foreign ways?
You saw I did nothing to harm you
but then you looked confused
as if you didn’t know who I was
as if you didn’t want to know.
As if to ask me, “who … or what are you?”
How could you have seen me,
my desperate, weary face,
without having seen my suffering?
I gave up everything to come here.
Like so many others before me
I too washed up on your shores
fleeing my planet to escape persecution
to start a new life
to die in a strange world
instead of the world where I was born.
How could you threaten and attack me
after such an arduous journey as mine
when all I wanted was the same as you?
Is there no hospitality left here for one more stranger?
No food left to feed one more hungry mouth?
Are your beacons of deceit
scattered throughout space
put there to fool others?
Why do you invite those less fortunate than yourselves
only to ridicule and torment us when we accept?
Can I assume that my family,
my mate and my offspring
who were sent ahead of me
also met with your blind hostility?
What have you done with them?
Did you feel the need to kill them too?
Why do you stare down at me like that?
Didn’t you think my eyes could cry?
Didn’t you know
alien blood …
could flow?
Poem copyright 2001 by Andree Gendron
Altered “Voyager” image by Andrew G. McCann
