The couple asks how they can afford adoption

I know what they want me to say: The money will come.
Trust and it will happen.

I want to say, Picture this: Babies lined up,
dressed in white

K-numbers hang off their hats
like price tags.

To protect privacy, the agency says,
Black out

these numbers, black out their faces.
I curled up

inside the picture. I stayed within
the lines.

I wanted. So I believed: God
would make it right

But nothing was right in country. There,
Min-su had a family.

There, a foster mother who crouched to the ground,
sang his favorite songs.

There, Min-su giggled, kicked his feet.
I smelled funny, talked funny,

knew none of the right songs. In country, I kidnapped
my son. I took

a screaming child from his mother, strapped him
to my chest, hurried

away thinking, Don’t look back. I was naïve,
white—

Love covers a multitude of sins. All you need
is love, right?

No matter how hard I try, my hands won’t come clean.
I hear myself say, It’s the best thing

that ever happened to me.

Jamey Temple is a writer and professor who teaches English at University of the Cumberlands in Eastern Kentucky. Her poetry and prose have been included in several publications such as River Teeth, Rattle, Appalachian Review, Bending Genres, and Still. She was named finalist in Fourth Genre’s 2022 Multimedia Essay Prize and finalist for Newfound Journal’s Prose Prize in 2016. You can read more of her published work through her website (jameytemple.com).