The Alien Files..
The Very Stones Will Cry Out...
I wake up on a Saturday morning to a random phone call from my landlord. I'm tensed because I am constantly worried that he'd know my truth, and if I'm exposed, if people knew that I'm not from them, the consequences can be catastrophic.
A year ago when I met my landlord, he asked for a specific type of document that I have known humans acquired by birth. The governments would give each individual a paper that had their face, name, and a number as a way of identifying that this human belonged to this country. I naturally did not acquire such a paper, and so I needed to convince him somehow that I too was a human.
Stuck amongst the earthlings indefinitely, I attempt to navigate my life, attempting to hide myself amongst them. And though it may not be my right, I aspire to live a full life on this planet as everyone else does. Recognized or not. I slowly became a master of camouflage, adapting their accent and language and even fancied their food, and have surpassed my unsuspecting neighbors' authentic cooking skills.
At night I lay in bed and try to remind myself that though I feel like Earth is my home, I have no rights to it. The place I'm from is the unknown, for as humans would claim, the unknown is only what they have yet to understand and uncover.
The most important part of my day is the makeup. I sit on my chair, my reflection staring at me, and it may deceive an onlooker to be the reflection of a person, but there is much work to be done for the coloring of my skin in human shades, for the placements of my eyes and nose and lips, for the wires of my voice to attune to that of a human frequency as I finish my master disguise of someone who just belongs knowing he doesn't.
On payday, I walk to the desk and wait in the same line as the others. I keep my posture straight, though if you could measure my anxious dread you'd break your measuring tool, but my smile stays on. The line moves up till it's my turn and I reach my steady hand that hides the shakiness of my soul as I smile at the woman who hands me my envelope and says, "Have a good day, sir," unsuspectingly, so carelessly that I almost forget I'm the great pretender.
At home, I watch the news of alien files and scoff. "If only people cared about stateless folks like me the same way they cared about aliens from outer space," I say as I drink my non-alcoholic beer while the news goes on talking about those files, as my mind drifts off to all the things I've lost as a stateless person and laugh as I wonder... do they have statelessness on Mars or Jupiter too?
From the underground ~camarada lima