Fear of the foreign and the fear of being foreign.
Terror of nuns from the Star of the Sea Lyceum
Afloat in hooded habits with punishing rulers.

Difference. Wanting “someone who looks like me”
Is different in different spaces. Jews in Der Stürmer
Don’t look like Paul Newman or Lauren Bacall.

The nuns would teach you a lesson, said my mother.
After her injury she and I spoke little,
Concussed as she was, apart in the dim room,

But we did share the sci-fi magazines.
We earthlings colonized or colonial, history
Remade as future. One story made me wonder

Was I really one of the doomed ancestors
Stranded to die on a foreign planet, or was I
The microscopic descendants they designed.