KATHLEEN JONES

ADOPTED

Her mother told her she was chosen
lifted from a row of cots containing
inconvenient babies; a charitable home
hopeless with the sound of crying.

The girl who birthed her, knitted
jackets trimmed with thin, white ribbon
embroidered gowns. Stitched her name
`Anne' into the flannelette. For weeks after,

she'd kept on coming to the house,
begging to see her child. Just once,
to hold her, look at her. Left behind
a letter blotched, unreadable.

Annie knew nothing. Only that she'd been
a waitress in a seaside cafe. So we spent
weekends and holidays drinking unwanted
milkshakes. Looking for likenesses.

When the law changed she was given
a bad address in London. High-rise blocks
with sour stairs, dog shit on the landings.
Found a thin, tired woman with limp hair

crying, clutching a crumpled photograph.
So unlike her they had to be mistaken.
But then, there was the letter and the name --
all that grief and twenty five years distance,

not to be wished away by birthday or Christmas
cards and the occasional visit. They sit
politely in a tea shop, neither family nor friends,
compelled by the ruthless connection of genes.