When I finally found you,
when I finally knelt at your grave,
when I finally said hello,
when I finally said goodbye,
when I finally touched the ground
in which you are buried
on the hillside across the river
from the city where you were born,
a Jewish girl in West Virginia
not long removed from Lithuania,
when I said my farewell that morning
knowing I might never return,
I did not mourn you for I had
mourned the loss of you
in some way from the moment
I knew I was adopted, for
that was when I began
to mourn the mother I wouldn’t meet
until that cool West Virginia morning.

First Published in Unleash Lit, June 2024
https://www.unleashlit.com/p/two-poems-108