They keep arriving in my email,
sometimes one or two a day,
and then nothing for a week or more.
I look at them out of curiosity,
because I have learned all I wanted
some time ago and they are like icing
on a cake I no longer intend to eat.
But they are “family” of sorts, distant
always, remote usually, but I want
to know their names, to see where
the threads of my heritage wander
back into the endless realm of history.
And after all, what else is an adoptee
to do but look, even when he learns
who his birth parents were which
is why he began the search initially.