My hospital records show they

were married all properly homogenized

for public viewing before I

was born but divorce records confuse

any clear story, except

the word abandonment, less than two

years after my birth. The ink on the docs, dried

decades ago, a permanent tattoo

on my skin, hidden in shame.

Beyond this physical evidence, I have nothing

of my early months with her nothing

no pictures of the two of us none.

Holding me, did she smile or make funny faces?

No baby mementos none.

Did she buy me a doll or toy guitar like hers?

No hand-me-downs none.

Did she have a favorite hat or special ring?

No stale remnant none.

This nothingness deepens

my longing, large as the lunar sea.

Lost At Sea

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It’s always our self we find in the sea.
-e.e. cummings

I am struck by the only snapshot I have

of my teenage biological mother.

Shoulders folded over the tidal weight

of premature responsibility she hunches

at the edge of the frame apart

from me on my daddy’s lap

on the other side of the photo’s world

where family loses touch.

She and I stare stark as twins in a coffin

while my father poses for the camera

with an immigrant’s big-toothed pride.

I harbor an early voice vague

a foghorn from memory’s riptides

Let her cry

as I lie alone in darkness.

I don’t know my age but I can still

feel this backwash of vacant loss

going back before my birth.

These two clues are all

I have of the back-alley teenager

who pushed me into this world the hook

that captures then lets me go.

Urban Flood

At thirteen, I pushed into the Puerto Rican, a ghetto
grocery, past gang lieutenants, to yell threats at the leader

for following me on his motorcycle. His sidemen smirked,
but Johnny never came near me again. In my seedy turf,

tough talk made up for size and gender, but sometimes I had
to surrender to the storm front inside me.

I’d run for cover under the tenement stairwell vulnerable
to uncontrollable torrents of tears
tempests of rage inside my brain.

One winter, I ran away for two whole hours, in flimsy socks
and rubber boots wandered in Milwaukee Avenue stores
for warmth until my will chilled to bone and forced me home.

I sat quietly on the hallway steps so my stepmother
would not know she had “won” yet. I can hear her

You’re nothing. You’ll have nothing. I hated that I always
had to come back, but I’d always wait
until the downpour had passed.

I could again pretend to tough talk my way out of any storm,
except the real one at home.

Patsy Asuncion