A Shattering Truth
You and Dad tried to conceive for twelve years before you decided to adopt. You told me that story often enough: how I grabbed your pinky when you visited candidate babies, and you knew I was the one. But what happened when Robert was born?
He came two-and-a-half years after me, the child you for whom you waited those twelve years. When he did, I become the sign, not only of how long you waited, but what you became: the birth mother of a handicapped child.
If that’s so for you, how much more so was that for Dad?
You both had buried that shame. But it sickened us all, as all secrets do. And this is the truth that we never told.
And never will.
empty rooms
how quickly you turn the page
of your photo album
photo by Denny Müller
first published on Image Curve, March 22, 2018
for dVerse Poets Open Link Night #216, Bjork pubtending
Frank J. Tassone 
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