In the present world, a transracial adoptee’s experience is inevitably complex, as they break both the genetic continuity and the racial continuity in our definitions of family.
The camera light blinks red every couple of seconds as a warning that I am not alone—yet my boss does not know that the eyes in the freezers and fridges behind me can see past industrial steel.
Had he not run out of sugar, Abraham wouldn’t have left his house at all. It’s the sixteenth of the month, and a storm stirs in the air of his small Southern town.
dad smokes outside West Ridge cafe/ friday nights at ten/ after coffee, two creams no sugar/ shelf burritos and twizzler sticks/ gone hard and cold at our corner table
The summer I turned twenty-one was also the summer I spent readying myself to leave California. Perhaps most difficult was leaving the Pacific Ocean, the body of water I felt so certain I belonged to.
I was six or seven, and I stood a little ways from my father, who was grasping the handle of a small navy suitcase in one hand and, with the other, knocking on our bathroom door. His face was stoic, unmoved by the reality of being cast out, exiled from us.