I would not have been the family man I am today, if it weren’t for the alien invasion. The spores, after drifting through space, landed on Earth’s receptive soil and sprouted, their tendrils waving in the wind, ready to inject their body-snatching virus. Fortunately, I became one and hatched out of a pod as an emotionally muted plant being.

Now, I get dressed in the morning and go downstairs, where my daughter is already in the kitchen.

“Good morning, dandelion dad.” She will burble, shoveling cereal into her mouth.

“You’re not dressed?”

“Yes I am. I’m wearing this to school.” She’s wearing pajama bottoms, adorned with black leaping cats with wetness spreading, getting wetter as she stands.

“You must be uncomfortable in those wet pajamas. Perhaps, you should change”

“I’m not wet.” Urine runs down her pants leg and onto the floor.

And instead of yelling, I’ll give her an empty hug and tell her it' OK, and everything is as good as it will ever be.

The spore seedlings, shaped like split milkweed pods, shriveled like an old woman’s open hand. If only I’d found them earlier and one evening placed one under my bed, waiting for it to suck out the anger and pain,

I’d not have grabbed my daughter by the wrist and twisted when she stuck Mr. Tin Foil in my face, demanding dinner right now. And we’d not have gone to the psych ER again, because she’d been violent when I tried to get her to eat a carrot.

I’d not have spun her around and put her into a hold. She would not have dug her fingernails into my forearm and growled “Moths don’t have noses”. No choking sounds. No gasping. “You’re hurting me, Dad. I’m choking. You are suffocating me. You’re breaking my spine.”

No squirming. “My hands are numb. When they fall off and I have no hands, the police will see how I have been abused”

While in a hold my arms wrapped angrily around her, she would not have thrown her head back and smacked, busting my lip open. She would not have bitten into my thumb, growling through her teeth as she masticated my knuckle.

And the police would not have been called one more time, because she’d been violent again. I’d have been a better parent if I’d been a little less human.

And just as the caterpillar turns to soup in its cocoon, but later as a newly born moth can remember the smells from its caterpillar days, the buzz of a hive mind would fill by dreams, as I turned to epigenetic paste and shed by plantain placenta.

I’d remember the last time I’d seen my wife, when she looked up at me and said, “I don’t think our daughter will ever really love us.” Her tear-filled eyes. The faintest hints of crow’s feet.

I could have been a better spouse when I’d shrugged and replied, “We’ve got years.”