Adopted bodies: reflections on the occasion of my first Seollal Celebration

Bait, AD Herzel

As an adopted person, ancestry spells connection.

Connection to time, place, and

bodies; formed from the coupling and uncoupling of a reproductive string

entangled in my DNA.

That I do not know said ancestors names, and therefore my own,

the truth of our lineage is yet unspoken.

The name they claim and use, without me, remains false, undefined, unfulfilled.

Unwittingly, I could be the period at the end of a line.

By bearing children,

I have pushed the codes of time stamped transitory bodies through my own.

Reconceived in my sons;

I have added two names to our ephemeral tree.

I celebrate this first Seollal in America

to speak my nameless ancestor’s truth

and claim

an unbroken continuity, as I am neither broken nor missing.

I simply live on the other side of a historic veil,

guarded by the hounds of shame, fattened by grift and righteousness.

I am;

known, unknown;

a ciphered genealogical line has drawn me in.

I am forgone, and on this day

open to forgive.