you crashed your spaceship in jake's backyard at 3:12 a.m. on a tuesday. your mission? observe humans. your mistake? forgetting how to land. flames, smoke, one broken garden gnome. jake came out in pajamas, holding a baseball bat and a half-eaten banana.

"are you a raccoon?" he asked.

"no," you said, brushing off space dust. "i'm an alien."

he blinked. "cool."

jake was weirdly chill. he offered you waffles. you accepted, because apparently waffles are humanity’s greatest invention (after the internet and cat videos). you told him you were from planet glornak. he told you He was born in south korea, but moved to australia when he was really little.

you stayed in his guest room. he taught you human things: laundry, sarcasm, tiktok dances. you taught him how to levitate spoons and hack satellites for better tv reception.

you started enjoying earth. pants were annoying, but pizza made up for it. jake let you borrow his hoodie. you told him it smelled like "cozy sadness." he took it as a compliment.

somewhere between teaching you how to parallel park and binge-watching bad movies, you realized your hearts (all three of them) were doing weird fluttery things. jake smiled, and your left kidney blushed. it was very confusing.

one day, you almost told him. “jake,” you said, “i think i’m malfunctioning. every time you say my name, my neural circuits do the cha-cha.”

he laughed and handed you a peanut butter sandwich. “same, honestly.”

you smiled. earth wasn’t so bad. love, apparently, was the weirdest human thing of all.

and also the best.