Yesterday I read my poem My Texas Fantasy at the book launch for the Texas Bards Poetry Anthology 2025 (plug!) My poem is about what was probably my first ideation that I do not belong where I was/am. I didn’t write it with that in mind exactly. or overtly recognize it then, but I clearly believed I really belonged in Texas:
I believed if I lived in Texas
I would somehow acquire oil wells
or a cattle ranch
or be a cowboy.
In anticipation I wore
a black felt cowboy hat trimmed
with white braid.
I developed a Texas accent.
By some twist of fate I ended up here a few years ago, but no oil wells or cattle have come my way, and I am not a cowboy, but I love Texas in a curious way. Despite the horrible politicians in Austin, I like Texas better than Ohio. I’m shallow. Perhaps it’s the weather that lets me lie in the sun in mid- November. Suck it up, Ohio!
I’m not sure that I know any adopted person who has never felt displaced on some level. Disjointed. Stuck with a life that wasn’t supposed to be theirs. To be honest, my life has been much better than it would have been if I’d been kept. That is fine with me. I would not have made a good bougie household drudge. But it’s the secrets, the collusion, the concealment, the closet. The normalization of lies–social and biological. The romance of the white picket fence. It’s exhausting.
The displacement for me is the acrobatics of adoption. The handsprings, the way our identities, our histories, our origins, ourselves are tossed into the air, twisted and turned. The tightwire we walk between our adoptee reality and our forced pretense. What the rest of the world sees and believes cluelessly and what we know intimately. The handsprings and backflips to put others at ease. We are after all, adopted to please others. Our contorted psyches. Our flexible Otherness.I cannot imagine what it is like to be not adopted.
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(No, it will never be X!)
Stop Safe Haven Baby Boxes Now
Poke the Bear 2025
Day 21 – 7 days to go!
