Loud and True:Out of the Fog Poetry By Jessica Ke’mani Hairston If I were going to hush—the breath I’d suckback in/ should knock you overThe breath I’d suckshould return my birth mother to meat least her shadowand then send me back to my original sinlike if I’d never had my first breathmy mother would still be here now; breathingIf I were going to hush—you’d be talkingto my hand/ you’d be fixing your
A Placid Shore By Ali McNally Liza’s daydreaming started when she was around five years old, shortly after her babysitter spilled the beans about her adoption. She was playing with a baby doll in the kitchen, holding it like a real baby and
No Refunds By KC Glancing in the rearview mirror, I see my younger brothers pass the bottle of vodka we won in our family’s white elephant game back and forth. I catch myself before I tell them to knock it off, instead deciding to let it go. We’re only two minutes away, and I’m fairly confident there’s no one patrolling my aunt’s senior citizen complex. It feels good
Loud / Quiet By Mirella Stoyanova LISTEN TO THE AUTHOR READING: You are loud and I am quiet. You are loud. Your ruckus love of life of the “buy a dog while your father is out of town”
Alone Together By Erica Curry VanEe LISTEN TO THE AUTHOR READING: Ten years ago, I stood in the cold March drizzle in Columbus, Ohio, surrounded by strangers who felt more like family. I had never been around so many adopted people. In their sea of faces, I recognized something deeper than familiarity—a shared wound. Each of us intimately understood the profound loneliness of losing our biological families at birth, an experience impossible for the nonadopted
The Places Light Can Reach By Jean Kelly Widner I keep your secrets. I see you Momma, I really do, even if I don’t understand you. We’re here in our home because you chose this. You are my mother not by accident but by the power of will. Signed and sealed, adoption made us mother and daughter. But you don’t always want me, and I don’t know why. You hide. From me. From you. Pills and bottles are your comforts. Not
The Irony of Fillings By Mila X Cement is poured in at birth.Into the cracks.Tiny cracks formed at the time of our inception.From whence we are sent hurtling onto a treacherous path.Fragmented further by separation…and by the erasure of our histories, imprinted in our genes.Imperceptible, yet ever present. The cement flows in, fills up the gaps, and slowly hardens — dampening our life force.Turning dark grey to light
No One Here Gets Out By Ruth I tried out loudness early in life. Asking my adopters about who my birth parents were. The discomfort on their faces—something I became used to whenever my difference from them was exposed by my actions—made me sick and rage-full. My adoptive mother, with a mildly threatening undertone: “What if you don’t like what you find?”“What if she was a fast girl?” “Only bad adoptees want to know their birth
Holding It Together By Karen Grayson When I was born, my birth father, Stephen, picked up his heartache and drove two hours each day to see me in the nursery. He knew that after my placement he would likely never see me again, and instead of avoiding it or burying his feelings, he fought through traffic and judgmental nurses, who felt he had no right to be there, just to be near me one last