I Will Never Know — Karen Wangare Leonard

I WILL NEVER KNOW

I want to say I am over being mad

at my birth mother for abandoning me.

But I do not think a loss like that is something you get over.

You carry it with you

besides where you say your name

and introduce your family.

You carry this grief

and hope it doesn’t take your form.

Perhaps I was born of a woman

suffering from abuse.

I have run that scenario time and again.

I think it is one I can live with:

being given up for safety.

Maybe I was conceived from a rape.

That I can pardon.

I know what it is like

to not have this body be mine.

I cannot imagine losing the right to me

and having a reminder of it daily.

There is also the possibility of being born

into poverty.

Where if I ever found my birth mother

she would tell me

“I did not have better to give you.”

Then I have the last reason.

The one in which I was never good enough.

Where my existence was too much

and I was made into a disappearing act