XLVIV. Lifeboat

The Little Martian bobs into view for long enough for me to notice him.

He slips into my books, into library nooks, into the crooks of my elbows and the curve of my knee, until suddenly he is all I can see.

“What sup?”

His chest is heaving, his spectacles skewered, his chest warm with exertion

“I’ve been.-“

“Trying.

He wheezes.

To talk to you

For over

Th-

Two weeks now.

Hey Little Martian. What’s up?

I say flat and without quotation.

“Wah sup? What sup!?!”

"What sup is that I can’t tell where my sentences start and your end

I’m lost, wandering every beautiful bend

I want this feeling to end.

I create a lifeboat out of random blades of grass

Alas!

Upon these foreign shores

Where to find myself they sent myself

I grow cold and tired, and long for familiar shores. “

The little martian cocks his brow and purses his lip in the same frustrating manner my grandmother does when she disapproves of something but won't voice what she actually thinks.

“What?”

I ask the little Martian, a little self-conscious of my Irish ditty now.

“That poem.”

I look away, ready to get prickly and defensive.

“Was ... definitely. Something. “

The Martian bursts into chortling giggles and I can’t help but follow

“Not my best work?”

“Not your best work. “