1.
Seconds after my first breath
a nurse whisked me away
A bloodline
severed
like a snapped branch
before it falls
My birth mother laid in silence
her empty swollen body
With eyes closed
she pleaded for another choice
2.
A faded manilla folder sits on the agency shelf
Stark pages of my fractured truths:
Single and poor
my birth mother exploited
a baby for profit
the transaction made
Documents falsified
Birthdate: Certain
Birth mother: Unknown
3.
I am six weeks old
nourished by my birth mother’s breast
the sound of her voice
lulls me to sleep
Saranghaeyo, my beautiful baby
I was told my birth mother wanted to keep me
but like me, she does not know
how to reconcile with a stranger
4.
A young woman descends down the jetway holding my small body wrapped in a soft pink blanket. She walks me into a room surrounded by a haze of fluorescent lights. I can feel a warm hand stroke my cheek as she lays me into a stranger’s wide open arms. I look into the camera. I do not cry.
A worn photograph,
proof of my origins
What is left to reclaim?
And I wonder which version
my birth mother retells.
