Did you so fear being Hagar
that you deemed me Esau, stole
my birthright, my name, my past
and cast me off into a wilderness?
I knew nothing of this, your secret
taken with you to the grave as you wished.
Did you consider that I might be
Ishmael, never knowing my father,
adopted into a culture that would
never be mine, a child who would
become another when theirs arrived?
It matters little now, for I have
found you, watered your grave
with tears of joy and loss, imagining
the touch of the woman who bore me
crossing finally into the promised
land of my family and my heritage.

First appeared in New English Review, November 2023
https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/step-right_up/