My father always joked that I'm of a distant alien species.

   He said that it was because I was ugly when I was born, too red with the remnants of my mother’s womb and all the suppressed wrath she had corroding my veins. It showed on my face, a baby born with the features of unaddressed fury of a thousand years. It would be nice if that were true. To have your mother’s wrath run laps through your bloodstream and burn its imprint on you, how you are a product of your mother and therefore exist in the world to live the life she put on halt when she had you. 

   I feel like my mother would want to be loved. 

Foreign, us eldest daughters, to the concept of love that makes your heart flutter; the love that welcomes you home to the rickety enclosure of your kin. Instead, it is up to you to keep the house from running amok with blood overpouring, wrath unwoven, and fury unfurled. Maybe at one point in time, all that wrath was love before it corroded itself from within. Maybe my father did love my mother and my mother did love him even more. 

   I would rather believe that I am of a distant alien species. 

   That way I wouldn’t have the lost life of my mother printed on my palm, reminding me every time I hold it against someone that my purpose in life is to find someone to love. That way I would be able to justify my inability to love someone as a fault in my system. I would hold my tongue from the blame aimed at my father and mother; for this genetic hole in my heart that is supposed to be warmth I can give out. 

The wrath of my mother might have just made my blood run cold; 

   that would be a sensible reason. That could be a reason why I didn’t cry as my grandfather was wheeled into the crematorium fire. My grandmother forcefully stripped naked of her love for him, all the torn-up remnants engulfed with his body in the flames. 

The pain was too much for her and she collapsed. 

   that could be a reason why I stood silent as my father plucked from the forbidden tree. Humanity first sinned when Adam handed the apple to Lilith instead of Eve. God sent Eve away out of mercy, and He froze my bloodlings as my mother departed for Earth solely. 

Marriages don't bind without the love to tie the vow.  

   Love has never been warm to me; it always burns hot. 

   …Is how I justified the one time I got together with the person I had a crush on for three years when they came to me as a rebound. They burned so hot and I wasn’t burning at all so we got together, me with a fire goblet ready to drink their flame. 

I don’t know love if it was not a fire. 

   …was how I approached the first crush I had in elementary, the one I chose through a game of eeny meenie miney moe when I was bored during English class. The teacher was talking of Cupid like a long-lost confidante. Years later I still choose my crushes through games of eeny meenie miney moe. I sniff the scent of burnt ashes like how wine connoisseurs pop open their nostrils for vino. I chase my crushes relentlessly, jutting out my dull head of a match praying that one of them could make me burn. 

 

My father always joked that I’m of a distant alien species. 

   Maybe I come from a distant planet where its inhabitants reproduce by warming up their bodies against each other and by that I mean hug each other and throw words of affirmation and then you get pregnant. Maybe then they would co-parent but the only time there were feelings involved between them is as they shout out how the other is pretty, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! And now they have become a family of 4. 

    I would rather believe that I am of a distant alien species. 

   Maybe I am from the moon. Not the earth’s moon; I am too insignificant to be the only one orbiting around a someone. Maybe I am Europa. Insignificant in that I am the smallest, but close enough to delude myself into thinking: That even with the absence of love I am still able to reflect the warmth I absorb. Europa must be like me. So severe in her disconnect from the human race, that it took Zeus being a bull to mend her wrath back into love. 

   Do you think just being able to bounce the warmth of the Sun is enough? 

   The moon must be lonely. 

   I wonder if my mother has ever felt this lonely. I would rather disgust myself with the thought that my mother and father had once loved each other because to live, but not love, is so goddamn isolating. Do you see all those people; in love, forever secure in the engulf of each other’s warmth? 

   I see but I do not feel. 

I videre sed non sentiunt. 

   I am forever trapped outside the window looking in. I am forever cursed with only bouncing the warmth that the Sun emanates to me. While the Earth absorbs the warmth, I am cursed with the knowledge that my father and mother’s lack of love ripped me out from my home planet. I am a moon that has to reflect the warmth to make up for my lack of it. My feelings are second-hand. 

   I write cheat sheets of how to connect with the feelings of love. I write characters and I mold them to teach me how to love. When they fail, I rip them apart from everything that they loved the way I was ripped apart from my mother’s womb with my sack of love still stuck on the walls of her belly. Tragedies, they call them. But tragedies end with an ultimate tragic denouement. My life still goes on. 

   I see to feel. 

I videre sentire. 

   I devour romantic melodramas in zero-point-five speed. Taking notes on it in the name of research; I chew the notes I've taken to mush and hope that it seeps through my teeth and into my blood. The screen closes up on lips dancing upon each other and the background reflects my chapped ones. I pray that no one will ever have to experience grinding theirs on my asphalt. 

   I read cheat sheets and flip my stomach inside out to carve butterflies on its walls but they lay flat, wings ripped, refusing to take flight. 

 

I am of a distant alien species. 

   Real love is warm but as my hands inched closer to the fire I pulled away to discover frostbite. My molecules are melded to fit the place where I come from, and my body reacted with convulsions when the world forced upon me the image of two bodies merging themselves into a creature of saliva and sweat. 

   I am cursed with the repulsion of love that I tried hard to cover with existing labels. I said I like girls in a world where loving another girl is unforgivable if you present as one. In this new world where loving anyone is forgivable what red herring can I use to cover up my crime? 

   I remember the strobing lights when I was on the run. Under the lights were humans engrossed in the ritual; they lathered themselves in each other’s body fluid and merged to a giant blob. I threw up the carcasses of the butterflies I carved into myself. Someone held up my hair as I was crouched on the toilet seat and I thought: This is it, if I am able to love then this is the moment those strobing lights will stop to shine the spotlight on us. The thought made me vomit another round and her gentle hand stroked my back. 

The strobing light illuminated red, green, blue. 

   I squinted my eyes and the merged bodies separate; my eyes were met by a face identical to mine. They slammed their chapped lips to those of the girl holding up my hair as my stomach rearranged. 

   The giant blobs chanted Aro. 

Aro. 

Aro. 

   Cupid wants his aro back.  

   Take a symbol of love and drop letters from it as an apology that I exist with the absence of the feeling that brought me to exist. Half-bred. They held a trial for me and had the stake ready. 

You are not welcome in our space. 

   Doomed to be from the outside looking in, forever a moon reflecting the rays of love the Sun gives out in excess. 

   You’re shivering. 

Is it cold? 

   I threw myself into the fire and the frostbite froze me into a specular being. I am sent to the human race to reflect warmth to them—my mother’s wrath flows through my blood and become my single life force even as my organs shut down, unable to sustain itself without the heat. My father always joked that I’m of a distant alien species. 

   I see therefore I feel. 

Ideo ergo sentio.