To One Unnamed
By Anonymous
Adoptee, 21
From Jiangsu Province; Living in Athens, Georgia
Ten thousand peaks* apart from home, ten thousand peaks away from that place–shadowed faces, veiled memories beyond the trembling hands of a child who has surpassed childhood by only a mere breath. Taking irregular steps toward the origin of my lifeblood, I am blessed slowly by crumbs and then by morsels. Each small mountain I climb leads me closer and closer to that dreaded end step. Take me home, to the highway of my supposed abandonment, toward the ones I have never called sister, brother. A veiled past lies behind my infancy.
Sleep flees from me, through nightmares the screams strip me of peace. Taken, taken, taken from home. Mother pursued, me hidden behind a protective arm. Intruders, inside my home and my family; comfort has fled. Given nothing but suffering at your absence–mother, father–accompanied by tears and confusion. Reasons escape as a burning note passes through fire. Stolen or taken, surrendered or sold, I climb mountains to scale the gaps. Turning over stones, searching and searching for what is no longer mine. American, but barely. Foreign features and phantasmic fears, but certainty escapes like a prisoner through bars.
Ten thousand peaks, ten thousand spears–filling blank pages with charcoal marks of despair. Slopes trip and doubts impale, yet this beggar lumbers on. Your heritage is no longer yours, you will never be Chinese. I have only my appearance and barbs beneath my skin. Climb the peaks, but you’ll never meet ten thousand. Walk alone and you will shrivel into your fears, isolation as a defense, the poison you crave. Language barriers, cultural walls… alone you will fall. Tack a label behind my name, abandonment across my back. Look what you have done to me, father, look what you have given birth to, mother. I climb these peaks for my brothers and sisters, not for you. Left behind to rot, to wonder at the truth. Veiled shadows cover these ten thousand of ten thousands, too numerous to name.
1/23/22
*The phrase “ten thousand peaks” comes from the English translation of the Chinese poem “T無題之一” (in English, “To One Unnamed, I”) written by Li Shangyin. The line from the poem is "劉郎已恨蓬山遠/更隔蓬山一萬重."
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