Stay at Home (a poem)

Stay at Home
by Andrew Porwitzky

The air was clear,
cleaner than it had been in centuries,
when the aliens came.

They wondered why
we all sat at home apart from one another
instead of gathering.

They landed in major cities,
landing in public parks where people still came together,
hoping to get an answer.

“Why do you live apart?”
They spoke all our local dialects without any accent.
Even in Alabama.

An alien coughed.
Then more of them coughed. Then they all fell over dead.
It was unsettling.

That’s when we learned
that despite all our hopes and worries surrounding alien life,
H.G. Wells had been right.