SAD SAPIENS

The Little Martian looks at me sadly from the blue patchwork bedspread that spreads cheerfully across my taut wrought-iron bed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything.”

“My brain,” he continues, eyes ablaze; “my brain is melting and my soul has fled.”

“What does that even mean?”

Concern threatens to envelop me, but I remind myself that this is the Martian I am talking to. He is probably just being dramatic, probably just blowing things out of proportion, as usual. He isn’t a person, remember? Just an extra-terrestrial, extra-emotional wreck.

“I can hear you,” he reminds me.

The Martian reads minds these days, but his own remains inscrutably turned away. Like a stubborn child who refuses to slip out of a pouting sulk, he turns his back on me—on understanding.

“Then stop listening,” I retort. I am sick of walking on eggshells around him,of excusing his behaviour, of trying to mask my own.

“I’m sick of it too,” he says. “of pretending and masking,feeling embarrassed about feeling! Sick of these circles that whirl and rotate and paint funny clown ears on my own. Sick of being a garish caricature, an out-of-the-world, out-of-proportion punching bag for human rationality and bitterness. I cannot help it if you are brittle.”

“I am not.” I balk.

“It’s alright, human,” he whispers, his face drawn, his cadence glum. “It’s alright. I’m just like you now. Just as brittle, just as cold, just as barren as the cold winds blow.”

“What?” I snap, my eyes darting up. I’m nervous now. “You don’t get to be jaded. You’ve only been here a few years.”

“And there’s a timestamp to human misery now? A certain quota I have to fill up on before I get to say it as well… that I’m devastated? That I’m disappointed… that I no longer believe that pockets hold magical berries and that fairies sing at dusk?”

“Don’t say that,” panic begins to gnaw at me.

“But you’ve made me believe it, human. You’ve made me see the truth. The Sad Sapien truth..."

My eyes well up, despite my better efforts. I am not proud—not proud of anything right now.

“Thank you,” he says, ever earnest, but heavy-lidded now.

I nod. Unable to muster much else. Perhaps the year will turn, and we will soon forget all the weary months that made us hunch - ever so quiet, and ever so crooked like a grnarly tree that longs for warmth to thaw its brambly branches.

"And until then?" asks the Little Martian, oh so world weary....oh so little now!

"We write it out. " I reply, with a confidence that deludes itself.

"Thats all?" he asks, incredulous.

I nod.

"Thats all."

I dont smoke and the little martian is no snoopy. But our brains are smoked , and i am in fact , rather snoopy.