Adoption=/=Abortion
Maria Picone
Reason for relinquishment: “…the natural mother realized her pregnancy too late and gave birth to the baby without any plan…”
-Adoption papers of Kim Soo Yeong, private records
fuck your mom “27/elementary school graduate/none/unwed”
your dad “32/junior high school graduate/peddler/unwed”
tell me without telling me my mom’s a whore who “happened to get acquainted with”
these thin sheets of paper that show me as “adoptable”
why I wished to be an abortion
why my suicidal ideas weren’t self-erasure but pain-erasure throw out baby with bathwater
try to get through all the trauma even if the consequence is you
back to nihilism an idea your mom should have contemplated
glorious void an idea your mom should have reconsidered
unthinking an idea not available to your mom
un-existing an idea your mom didn’t choose
for you, “healthy and cute” chosen anyway
baby girl you parents’ daughter
I do what I have to to live. I do what I have to, to live. I do what I have, too, to live. I do what I
have to live. I have to live. I have to live I have to she chose to have me
live
Maria S. Picone/수영 is a Korean American adoptee who won Cream City Review’s 2020 Summer Poetry Prize. She has been published in Tahoma Literary Review, The Seventh Wave, Fractured Lit and Best Small Fictions 2021. Her work has been supported by Lighthouse Writers, GrubStreet, Kenyon Review, and Tin House. She is a 2022 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Kundiman Fellow and Chestnut Review’s managing editor. Her website is mariaspicone.com, Twitter @mspicone.
© Variant Literature Inc 2021