What You Forgot

An ancient poem written by a very special alien girl.

 

From Alien Shores 

Copyright © 2009 by Kherry McKay

 

 

Editor’s note: This is the earliest poem known to humanity. It was written at least 28,500 years ago. It was penned by a young Hrit girl, no older than fifteen, and would have been written before her first year of womanhood. The Hrit thrived during the middle of Earth’s last ice age, on a planet 55 light years away. Archeologists discovered the poem along with other writings in a monastery on a small island on Hrote, their homeworld. The island was surrounded by an amazing beach of white sand.

 

The poem was written in a journal made of a thin animal hide, of an as yet unknown animal. Preserved in the dry Hrote climate, the poem was translated by esteemed Xenophilologist, C. A. Parker. The entire Hrit race disappeared without a trace before the time of Christ. All we have from their civilization is a few monuments, ziggurats, and less than twenty books of Hrit poetry. The name of the poet of the following remains anonymous; it appears nowhere in the extant volume.

 

What You Forgot

 

Don’t hurry away from loneliness.

It was introduced to you for a reason.

The beach stretches out for a thousand miles.

A voice sings behind the wind,

the voice of someone whose name you don’t need to know yet.

 

I am only fifteen. My husband has not elevated me,

has not attached a star of Harileen to my temple.

Our children’s eyes have not opened for the first time.

They have not screeched, nor croaked,

nor grabbed for laughworms in the moonlight.

 

A lime-colored sunset tells me I am not alone.

I long for God

like the Hret on the moons of Sansomé

long for comets with hair of bright light.

Take a moment to put your hands

into the sand, to hug the world.

The warm pebbles tell you, you belong.

Their heat spreads

through your slender body.

 

Pick up a Scroochy shell.

Watch it levitate in your hand.

It longs for God too, doesn’t believe in gravity.

 

I am missing one thing

as the sun goes down.

I am missing telling you

all this in person.

Though a thousand years or more have passed,

nothing has changed.

Loneliness is still good for the soul.

   Loneliness is the voice of God you temporarily forgot,

then remembered

as sand poured between your six toes

and scrooped beneath your

wandering feet.