i never wanted to invade-
do you really believe you’re so special?

no one leaves their planet
unless the planet is a black hole’s mouth.
you only warp for another sun
when Krellpoint is spinning apart.

no one puts their spawn in a saucer
unless the empty blackness is safer than the crust.
no one spends lightyears in a mycelial freighter’s stomach,
chewing orvac resin,
unless distance is safety.

my nestmate, who once tangled me breathless
beneath the humming fusion spire,
now clutches a fading picture of our spawn.
her limbs thinned, her carapace dulled,
thorax trembling with night-terrors-
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

and still these failed-sapiens say:
“ugly blue tax burdens,
sponging off the system.
they smell like burnt toast,
they broke their home,
so now they squat in ours.”

the peltless chimps hiss behind fences,
afraid of their own shadows
yet sneering at ours,
as if survival were a crime.
NIMBYs shrieking loudest,
as if an alien nest
would devalue their lawns.

their scientists bullied by autocrats,
their people split into tribes
that claw at each other in the dust.
you’d never choose to live among them
unless you were very, very desperate.

but a holding cell in Area 51
is safer than a city of fire.
they call this an invasion?
i call it survival.

home is a collapsing sun,
home is a nebula of famine,
and anywhere, even your Walmart parking lot,
with its gum-stuck asphalt and buzzing lights,
is safer than there.