Poetry by Neha Rayamajhi

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Alien

“The term ‘alien’ means any person not a citizen or national of the United States. Every foreign
national, including a refugee or an asylum seeker, is considered an alien unless his or her status
has been lawfully upgraded.”  Immigration and Nationality Act of the United States

They tell me to 
go back where I came from.
But I have lost my map
and what used to be my address is now
sometime a memory,
sometime a meteor, 
both afar.
So I sink myself deeper into this land I am on,
wrap arms around this body that has become the only home that wants to hold me. 

I dream of astral travel.
In dreams I astral travel-
build spaceships that won’t ask me for my papers,
have more legroom,
room to breathe 
and be.

In that celestial sphere
I come and go as I please,
make pilgrimage across constellations every year,
call circles of raised fists a country,
pledge my allegiance,
and turn love songs into a national anthem.

Borders are for humans
but they call my kind an ‘alien,’
say we are strange and terrifying.
I call us aliens
because I know of our magnificence.
We 
truly
are
out of this world.

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Neha Rayamajhi is a storyteller and a socio-economic justice worker from Nepal who is currently based in Boston, Massachusetts. She is the recipient of the 2018 Dastaan Award for short story hosted by the Desi Writers’ Lounge. Neha's work has been published in the South Asian Journal and other smaller online blogs.

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