The Adoptee Statistic

Context: the suicide rate among Korean Adoptees is something staggering like 5 times above average. Here is one guess why:

The Adoptee Statistic (4/5/13, edited 4/11/13)

At night, when the stars come out, I like to pretend each one is an ancestor.

I don’t know if that has any relevance in my History, my heritage;

it has lots of significance in My history. 

They look down at me, speak in a language I can’t understand,

that I’m too lazy to understand;

below the stars already, I sink deeper.

I call my mom--as a troubled child always should

and complain about my job because I lack the vocabulary to say what really bothers me.

My real sadness doesn’t translate,

but manifests as anger, as hate

and she tells me to stop bitching. 

And she’s right

but our blood doesn’t speak the same language

and we’re talking in codes that can’t be broken

so I hang up,

wish I had a mother who needed no translation,

yearn for darkness to reveal more ancestors in the sky

so I can learn by immersion.