FACELESS MOTHER BY KIM SUE STEVENS This poem was inspired by a prompt shared in the adoptee voices writing group that used artwork entitled “First Mother” by artist Annie Lee. Her thoughts are distant. The warmth is close. Encompassing wanting and hunger, I root for nourishment, Longing for security, closeness of a faceless mother. Was mother relaxed as I climbed into her lap? Did I root for her breast? Did I know that
ROMELIA BY ANGELICA REYES The maid, the nanny, the cook, the caretaker, the invisible. You weren’t invisible to me, you were Ama, Nan-Tli, mi corazón, mi alma … my EVERYTHING. All my little narcissistic needs, fulfilled by your touch, your comforting voice, your smell, the taste of your milk, the look of love when our eyes met. In those quiet moments, when my adopted family, your employers, were
GENESIS BY Margarita Troshina Within my quiet, safe life as a Ukrainian adoptee, I am confronted with the issue of identity, once a vague concern, now amplified against the ongoing war. I imagine my birthplace as a land where sunflowers and wheat sway under the endless blue sky. Yet, I’ve never known the warmth of that sun on my face or witnessed the dance of wheat
SHOCKWAVES BY JULIAN WASHIO-COLLETTE LISTEN TO THE AUTHOR READING: My wife, Lisa, and I recently moved from a wilderness setting to the suburbs, from a highly structured environment to a more spontaneous way of life. We now live in a tiny house, which, at 200 square feet, isn’t tiny to us at all since it’s larger than the cabin we lived in for the previous five years. The one peculiarity that has
FINE BY AUDREY B Do answers change, mature monotonous clarifying statements pressed onto skin that somehow visibly invited … “Your parents must be saints!” “Are you adopted?” “What are you?” “Do you want to find your real parents?” … how are you … I have grown to ask, “How did you sleep?” answers can vary family, biology queried … trauma’s politeness. Entitled examination, at any moment, under the sun what
RED GALOSHES BY JULIE MAE PIGOTT I’ve been looking in mirrors. Searching for reflections of belonging. Begging for someone to teach me the undecipherable code of family roots. I look at my birth mother’s high school yearbook photo for evidence. My favorite image was taken four months before she knew she was pregnant with me. I long to find myself within the radiant archetype of her face. “You look just like
TREE OF LIFE BY ELISA NICKERSON My biological father is married to a lovely woman named Pat. She is his second wife and is shy and pretty and a bit quiet. My father is like me, loud, gregarious, a talker. Pat observes. She has opened her heart to me which I find beautiful, as neither of us were involved in the creating of me, or in the decisions around my birth, relinquishment, and
FUZZY BY HANNAH ANDREWS Lisbeth knew better. She’d been warned a thousand times. “Never, ” Mama had said. “Don’t you ever,” Papa said, and their never-evers echoed endlessly inside her head as she sprinted toward the forbidden forest. “Belle! Come back!” Lisbeth cried. Her precious beagle, Belle, had bounded after a bunny, then blurred away, disappearing somewhere past the double tree door. That’s what Lisbeth called it, that spot so
MORNING COFFEEAT WIT’S END BY KATHLEEN SHEA KIRSTEIN I painted Morning Coffee at Wit’s End in 2001. Wit’s End was my happy place. I felt a deep peace there. I enjoyed listening to the call of the loons and watching the blue herons at the shore’s edge. The cottage faced west, and the sunsets were beautiful. This lakefront property in New Hampshire was
THE KEY TO ME BY JEAN WIDNER I was given a key. A meaningless key that opens a door, or a box, or a house, but I do not know where. It is a key without a home. Without a name. Just like me on the day they created my first birth certificate. The one sealed away, ignored, and made into an unofficial
THIS WORLD BY REBECCA COHEN Riverbank refuge, where nobody says I don’t belong. Where there are no words at all. My ears rest into rustling leaves, flowing water, crickets. Into the chatter of chipmunk and squirrel. A splish of minnow-jump, a splosh of turtle-slide, a splash of frog-leap. A finger of sun filters through viridian tree mothers in silent splendor. A golden messenger. Here I can breathe, welcomed into moss and leaf litter. Soft bed, heavy head. Back on
I WELCOME THE FALL BY DANIELLE ORR LISTEN TO THE AUTHOR READING: The doves and hummingbirds sang their songs to me all summer long, sharing their secrets and knowledge, and sometimes their sorrows. Even the three crows that drank water each day from the fountain outside my kitchen window are now gone. Were they an invention of my imagination, a figment of my desires and brooding nature? Have they gone looking for winter warmth elsewhere?
THE LEAVES BY MARCI PURCELL All the leaves crumble under the weight of me.Leavesleavingcrumblecrumblingweightwaitingunderme The leavers crumble under the weight of me.Theycrumbleundertheweightandleaveme They