"we are here to analyze and report"

A few years ago,
on the morning after Christmas,
I was sitting at the kitchen table
with my aunt eating breakfast.
It was snowing outside—
big, beautiful chunks,
covering the ground like thick,
vanilla cake frosting.
As I was dipping my toast—
drenched with warm, creamy butter—
into my cup of chocolate milk,
my aunt told me about
a dream she had the night before:
“I was in my old house
next to your grandmothers’.
It was late at night,
and I looked out the window
across the street, because
something caught my eye,
and I saw dozens of spaceships landing
in the high school parking lot.
They were beautiful—
their lights shining brilliantly
in every color, like traffic lights
or sunbeams shooting through stained glass.
As the ship doors slid open,
they walked out.
They looked just like us.
I ran outside and across the street
yelling, ‘What are you doing?
You can’t land here, everyone will see you!’
And they calmly replied,
‘Don’t worry Sheryl,
you’re the only one
who can see us.’”

We compared notes on
our own unexplainable sightings.
I told her about the ghosts
I’ve seen on Route 33,
and in my house,
and about the spaceship
I saw out in Plain City,
diving into the cornfields.
She told me about the saucer
she saw with my grandfather
over Lake Erie, how he explained,
“It is definitely not a military jet
or like any plane I’ve ever seen.”
and how after it flew away,
he said: “We speak of this
to no one, understood?
Because no one will believe us.”

I believe.

I believe some of us have
the gift of sight, and we are
sensitive to these happenings.
I still don’t know if it is
a blessing or a curse,
but in the words of my aunt:
“We are here to analyze and report.”
And I will dutifully do so,
because something tells me
I’m not documenting
and keeping these records
in vain.