I understand you breathe through your skin.
I am aware that you have two hearts,
Timed together irreducibly, brothers
In anonymous industry. I know
Your blood is green and not salty.
But it has been an empty year
Since I left Lost Hope station,
And you are the first thing
I’ve seen since then
With two legs,
A torso,
Only two eyes,
And teeth
Where they are supposed to be.
I have heard
The dockhand’s theory that similar conditions
Will produce similar species.
You are similar.
The tentacles projecting from your waist
Are not unattractive. The crest
On your forehead, as it rubs
The inside of your double shoulder,
Sputters in reds and blues and can
Perhaps on this world be sexually hypnotic.
Walking in the waist-deep water
Of your shipboard containment vessel,
Your crescent hips have a sway like those
Of one of the off-world girls I’ve seen
In working residence at Bailey’s Intergalactic Rest Stop.
Forgive me
If I use non-scientific descriptions:
I have been out this way
For a long, sterile time. What if
We start by just looking each other over?
Six fingers
Versus five.
Forearms in the same place
And nearly the same size.
A cool green skin with epidermal tallow.
We are beginning.
