Letters to Adoption

I wonder if the adoption agency thought they were clever, or if they thought both adoptive parents and adoptee having brown hair was enough to signal we belonged to each other.

I didn’t understand consent, the formal severance of me and my biological father. Like magic, my past dissipated.

I don’t know which herbs, spices, or ice cream flavors you like because 23&Me won’t tell me, and neither will you.

Last summer, I tied my hair into braids and glued a mustache to my upper lip, and I wondered if you might recognize your own youth.

Songs of the sea, of the forecastle where the sailors slept at night: Home, Dearie, Home.