Adoptee Images - Sketches, Portraits, and Photos

 Sketches of an Adoptee 

Sketches of the person here can't illustrate my inner fear.
I pose afraid the artist sees just how this picture is incomplete.
But what is missing what is gone, can't be seen it can't be drawn.
No shades can show the gaping holes, left in my heart, deep in my soul.
The pallet holds no color near, nor tint, or shade of hidden tears.
For what was lost taken away, the pain a brush stroke can't portray.
No pencil either lends a clue.
No crayon, chalk, will show the hue.
Of this facade on which I depend because I know not who I am.
Perhaps someday I will reveal these emotions that I feel.
The fragments of myself not shown.
Searching for family never known.

My cousin on my adoptive father's side found me on Facebook this past year has been kind enough to share some photographs of us as kids visiting our grandparents house.  It was so wonderful to look into our young innocent (most of the time lol) smiling faces in simpler times.  I saw my aunt in my cousin's face, and my uncle in my other cousin's face.  And there I was again, wondering where the mischievous grin, my eyes, and dishwater blonde hair came from.

You really never escape the wondering.  You can pack it up and put it away for awhile like old clothes in a trunk or a passing season's shoes.  But it is usually always stored closely to your heart and soul.  Never far from reminding you of all the "I don't knows".

The charcoal an artist did of me in New Orleans when I was 24 hung on my bedroom wall and haunted me for years.  Photos and portraits I have of myself are just gateways back into history and other dimensions of time for me.   Perhaps someday I'll hold in my hands some keys to unlock the never ending mysteries of who I really am.  Maybe someday all adoptees will have that right.