the origins of a smile
Kissing kissing long and slow and meditatively, kissing her lips
and her eyelashes, her gums, her tongue, her eyes--
she tastes, all other girls they only taste
like cigarettes, compared. She has the smell of mist on a fall
night, and I love her so much I could lie on my back just holding
her hand for the rest of my life. She’s adopted: it’s fine, she says, but
God I only want to know if my smile I got from my mother.
She deserves to know, God, if you’re here, if you’re listening, where that black
gold smile comes from.
Kissing, kissing long smooth and kissing hard those striking
flashing pupils—burning glances frozen in silence—
God knows she got them somewhere.
Once I lost her; I drove drunk down midnight alleys smashing,
when her lips came up, a glass sculpture of myself on the dash, and
when her teeth came up, another glass sculpture, and another
when her throat came up until I was knee deep in shattered glass.
And I was the powdered glass remains, wind-scattered on the air
over the moaning sea. But piece by jagged piece, her tender fingers
puzzled me back together, and now I view her reflection and mine inter-
woven on the ruddy cheeks of our children. In their radiant laughs laughs
the voice of their grandmother, her undying eyelids shut
when they sleep, her fingers ball in fists during fits, and her song
chimes when tears squeeze out; their abuela’s, skin, lungs, and spirit.
Did God ever whisper to my lover’s unborn spirit, she’d
be stolen out of Guatemala, and with every thought she’d miss
her mother like hell? But she said she’d come anyway, cross over,
and bring a lonely couple love.
Certain nights, she feels her mother’s soft, sun-worn hands holding lovingly
her tiny face, and it warms her, and it warms her, until she sometimes
goes back to being the only living dead person on the planet.
Kissing her, kissing, caressing,
there’s a sad and primal wish to be mothered, powerful, like a five-year-old
girl skipping rope at burning sunset. Kissing, I’m lost
kissing her like a ball bouncing down a long dark hall, I pray in God’s
presence and with his most beautiful angels weeping mother and daughter
shall be reunited. Whether or not, Father, she inherited anything, if love
is real and true and you are love and you are here
living and breathing in our hearts, then I have no reason to doubt
that she will one day get to see our sweet abuela smiling, and then,
my Lord, she can judge for herself.
the origins
I like the way this revolves repeatedly around a kiss, and one heck of a kiss at that. Its weird when you don't have any blood relatives. I met my mom for the first time when I was 39 - completely blew me away. Unfortunately, she died six years later, but I had my origin - not to mention blood relations. The funny thing is, you still don't feel like you quite belong - like its presumptuous or something. Its hard to shake some of the nuances of being adopted.
great stuff
quality...
i hope
i captured some of that confusion here, in honor of everyone who has had to live w/o blood relatives for any period of time, as i haven't. sometimes in my job i have to work towards terminating the parental rights of parents. sometimes i think the child would still be better off with his or her own parents. this poem is for my wife, for valentine's day, and i can say that she always misses her mom and always will.
I...
I adopted newborn twins last July. I often wonder how they will feel about being given up for adoption. The plan is to tell them that the mom loved them so much that she gave them life, when she could've chosen otherwise and then wanted them to have the kind of life that she could not give them, so she sacrificed getting to raise them in order for them to have a better life. Then, reiterrate how much we admired her for having such unselfish love for them and how blessed we are to have been chosen to raise them. Or something along those lines. I hope they feel secure and wanted even when they know that they were put up for adoption.
i think that sounds
like a pretty good plan. the word is that kids who are adopted as infants seem to cope more easily than kids who are adopted, say, over the age of 5. or probably 2 even. i don't know. my wife was adopted at 6, i believe. right now i am working a case w/ a kid who is 17, and was adopted at age 6. he has found his bio mom here in town, and it has made things tough b/c the adoptive parents are good people, but very sensitive to him wanting to see and talk about his bio family. in fact, the court ordered a PFA with him and his bio family, which was violated 3 times, and now the kid is in fostercare, and i'm not sure we'll be able to get him back with his adoptive family before he turns 18.
well, with your newborn
well, with your newborn twins, the most important thing to to talk about it, openly, as regularly as it comes up, and then some. if it remains a subject to be avoided (as it did in my family) then it becomes like a secret unmentionable thing to be ashamed of. And, yeah, the earlier a child is adopted, the less psychological problems they will generally have over the issue, if any. For the kids who bounce around through fostercare, I can't even imagine what kind of personal issues they'd have. It would be really tough, and if they act out, which is common, the social alienation escalates. But adoption, at any time in a kid's life, is a blessing, to say the least. The children just have different issues than others who were raised in their natural families. And the issues vary by circumstance.