Fermi’s Paradox (A Poem About Loneliness)

1 - Extraterrestrial life is rare or nonexistent.

Such a thought leaves a dull taste in my mouth like when I wake up with a fever. A cold fever. It’s coming home to an empty house. It’s looking up at the night sky and seeing no stars. It’s opening up your rib cage and finding no lungs, no blood, no heart. 

2 - No other intelligent species have arisen.

How does one define intelligent? I don’t find the business major in my theater class to be intelligent, but he is undeniably human. My dog licked the space heater twice, and she smells bad, but I still cradle her so close to my chest and she is so warm. If a species of clones of my dog lived on Gliese 163 I would be satisfied. 

3 - Intelligent alien species lack advanced technology. 

So do we, in some sense. It’s a matter of perspective. Is Hubble advanced? Was Cassini-Huygens? Am I? Are you?

4 - Other water bearing planets do not have significant land masses suitable for terrestrial life.

Fish can’t look up. Many sea creatures know the sun, and many the moon, but few the stars. Perhaps if I lived in a saltwater bath, I wouldn’t need to know the stars either. 

5 - It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself. 

When I was a child I broke my ceramic Noah’s Ark on purpose, because there was something white hot in me that was rending me asunder. When I was a teenager I tore apart the sketch I drew of my girlfriend, screaming at the windows. There have been moments that left me raw, where I twisted myself into pretzel knots trying to find respite. Yet I am still here.

6 - It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others. 

As all creatures are capable of great violence, so are they capable of great care. I tore up that drawing of my girlfriend, I guilt-tripped her, I said horrible things to her, all from a place of deep hurt. But I cared for her still, and I would apologize now if I could.

7 - Periodic extinction by natural events.

What in the universe culls? On Earth, it is volcanoes, meteors, climate change. But what would the vacuum of space spit out at those traveling its time-locked wastes that could end entire civilizations forever? 

8 - Intelligent civilizations are too far apart in space and time.

I was born in the wrong epoch. In the wrong megannum. Light years put miles to shame. 

9 - It is too expensive to spread physically throughout the galaxy. 

There are moments wherein I would trade all the food in my body, all the water, the oxygen, the life I have lived up to this moment for the single opportunity to hold hands with an alien. 

10 - Human beings have not existed long enough.

In the time scale of the universe, we are nothing, we are nobody. We are a bubble of saliva on the Milky Way’s lip, and even that may be giving us too much credit. Even in comparison with the Earth alone, we are younger than we can comprehend. There are sharks older than the United States. There are anemones older than the Parthenon.

11 - Humans are not listening properly. 

Have you ever had a conversation with someone that you knew they were tuned out of? You just keep talking and talking at them, but it’s talking at a brick wall. You may as well shove a skein of yarn into your mouth. You stop talking. You watch. You move on. Their eyes unfocus, then snap back to you. “Yeah,” they say. 

12 - Civilizations broadcast detectable radio signals only for a brief period of time. 

Imagine Doctor Maxwell Barry, sitting at his desk at the Greenbank Telescope in West Virginia. It’s approaching three am. His head is in his hands, his glasses are sliding off the end of his nose. His eyes flutter shut and his ears turn off. The radio telescope picks up a signal from across the galaxy, its source undeniably living. It’s brief, though. It comes, it goes, with Doctor Barry none the wiser. 

13 - They tend to isolate themselves.

Humans are intensely social. We surround ourselves with other humans. We pull members of other species into our homes. But jaguars never interact outside of mating, and spiders kill one another after what’s done is done. Maybe aliens aren’t humanoid, but jaguaroid instead. Or spideresque. 

14 - They’re too alien. 

Would we recognize a glob of goo floating in space as living? We have criteria for life, but that’s just life on earth. Could we communicate with viruses if we tried, despite them not technically being alive? Could I get the rhinovirus on the horn and tell it to chill out a bit? 

15 - Everyone is listening, no one is transmitting. 

Maybe radio waves are like breath, only we are just breathing in and in and in and in and never stopping to exhale. Maybe if someone else exhales, we will finally feel their breath on our faces. 

16 - Earth is deliberately not contacted.

I mean. I wouldn’t.

17 - Earth is purposely isolated. 

We used to have a snow globe music box. Within, it depicted a swan wedding. Flowers. Pink ribbons. Lush grass. Sometimes I’d imagine attending that swan wedding. I could be a flower girl. I could smell the flowers and sit in the lush grass. I could listen to the music that rumbled from under the ground, watch glittering snow fall around my face through thick, slimy water. That snow globe leaked. It was half empty by the time we threw it out. Something from Earth will leak out eventually, too. 

18 - It is dangerous to communicate.

What’s listening? Facebook listens to you on your phone, the government on FaceTime and Skype, Amazon through your walls. The world is littered with bugs of all kinds, and who’s to say the universe isn’t too? Will our next broadcast into space bounce off an all-seeing eye, causing it to swivel towards us? Are jaws already clamped around the Earth's crust?

19 - They are here undetected.

The next time a pretty woman on a street corner smiles at you, watch. Listen. Is her smile too wide? Do her eyes close vertically instead of horizontally? Is her voice too high or too musical? Is the touch of her hand too soft? Do you want her too badly?

20 - They are here unacknowledged.

Sometimes I feel that I’m not of this planet. Maybe I’m correct in that feeling. Maybe I am a stranger. Maybe this is the strange land. Maybe I am not looking for you. Maybe you are looking for me.