I look at the book
Have I read it before?
It’s a throng of short stories
My favourite genre 
I took it from the shelf 
In my own home 
So it has to be one of the 
For-sure-read tomes
Still, as I glanced
At the back cover blurb
Nothing jumped out
Not a line, not a word 
I looked at its front 
Multi shades of grey 
The image glimmered
In its dusky array 

I opened the book 
I had to recall 
A story, a plot twist
A mystery resolved
In the 267 pages 
I held in my hand 
So I started reading 
Page one, it began:
That day Alisha 
Looked up at the sky
The purples and blues 
Looked terribly awry …
The rest of the story 
Unwrapped itself 
As I glanced through page two
Of the book from my shelf 
Yes I had read it  
The memory crept in 
Of ETs and UFOs
And otherworldly things

Of skittering creatures
That had huge heads
Full of insidious plans
To make us all dead 
Or not! Even in fiction 
They were polite
Giving us choices 
Being forthright 
Choices! Forthrightness! 
Now those are things
That are as alien now as
Well … human beings!
Laughing, I put 
The Sci-Fi away 
Our own lives were stranger 
Than fiction these days