It invades.
Creatures descend from
above, like angry wasps biting at
human flesh;
inescapable,
painful.
They lock us
up. We are the
humane test subjects
now. I hear
screams like cold metal
scalpels sliding into
trembling skin.
I am next.
“hands” bite into my arms like
dogs to a
bone, and I am off,
deposited in a field unlike
any field I’ve seen before. Or
desert. Or ocean. Or
anything on Earth.
And I sit and am
taught like a
parrot, but instead of word manipulation, it’s
harvesting plants. Instead of
clipping beaks its is clipping
waving tendrils.
Instead of forming vowels it is
forming bundles,
an elongated “oh.”
Oh, I think.
How I wish for
home.
I do not like being a parrot.
But it is better than being a
lab rat.
Or crickets to a lizard.
Or cattle for mass consumption.
I clip. and I
“oh.”
But not to
anybody else. Other
parrots are there. But they
belong to other
owners. We have our own
cages.
Sometimes I wonder how to
break from my cage.
If only I wasn’t a
parrot. If only I was a
cricket, too small for
caged confinement. Or a
cow, much too large
and heavy.
If only I could get
a cow.
I look around.
Oh. I see the cattle are
barricaded in their own way.
Human life inside a
cage. I thought we had
done well with building
cages for ourselves
before.
Turns out alien cages are
better.
“Oh, I mutter to myself.
Stupid. Stupid.
“Hands” bite at my arms, and
I wish I had wings to fly
away. I am pushed. My cage is
covered. I cannot see
the other parrots. Only imagine their
sympathetic “Oh’s.”
It is comforting.
All I can do is
dream.
It is the sweetest drug I know.
I dream people are all equal,
that we feel the same
joy, pain, sadness, and
peace reigns on Earth.
We all love each other.
We are all brother and
sister. We are all human.
I wake up and find my dream
is reality, twisted
cruelly.
We are all the same.
We all feel the same, not
joy, but pain, sadness.
We all love each other.
That’s all we have left to love. No
family has been left
intact. We are all
family. Brother and
sister, mother and
father.
Skin color barely exists.
We are just
humans. To them and
to us.
We all are united under
slavery. Without us,
Earth is at
peace.
