Malka Older

Alien Baby

Alien baby sleep-dances on the sheets between us
Rolling and splaying, scuttling socks.
Scrunch like an inchworm, whine like an accordion.
Tiny fingers sneak beneath my shirt: the next communiqué will cover
nipples, gravity, the mechanics and effects of hair-pulling.
Alien baby levers up to vertical, bows and pulls
against my hands like a windsail.

From the window above the changing table
we see the snow, flakes flickering golden
In a pause of headlights. Alien baby, new to this world, is impressed.

Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and PhD candidate studying governance and disasters. Her writing can be found at Leveler, Tor.com, Bengal Lights, Sundog Lit, Capricious, Reservoir, in the poetry anthology My Cruel Invention, and in Chasing Misery, an anthology of writing by female aid workers. Her science fiction political thriller Infomocracy is the first full-length novel from Tor.com, and the sequel Null States will be published in 2017.