My daughter says
she feels like a Martian,
that no one understands her,
that one friend is too perfect,
and another too mean,
and that she has
the earliest bedtime
in her whole class.

I strain to remember
how a third grader feels
about love, about pain
and I feel a hollow in my heart
where there should be blood
and an ache where there should
be certainty.

My darling Molly,
no earthling ever lived
who did not feel
like a Martian,
who did not curse her bedtime,
who did not wonder
how she got to this planet,
who dropped her here
and why
and how she can possibly
stay.

I go to bed
whenever I like
and with whomever I choose,
but still I wonder
why I do not
belong in my class,
and where my class is anyway,
and why so many of them
seem to be asleep
while I toss and turn
in perplexity.

They, meanwhile, imagine I am perfect
and have solved everything:
an earthling among the Martians,
at home on her home planet,
feet planted in green grass.

If only we could all admit
that none of us belongs here,
that all of us are Martians,
and that our bedtimes
are always
too early
or

too late.

© Erica Mann Jong

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