Letters to Adoption

The world needs you in it, and you will come to savor every minute of your life.

It would be nice to look in the mirror and see you.

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.