Roots Between Skies

I was born beneath a sky I cannot name.

Somewhere, a woman breathed me into being,

her body heavy with love and fear,

her heart splitting between holding on

and letting go.

She wrapped me once in a blanket that smelled of

milk and salt and tears she could not swallow,

and then — she placed me in the arms of silence.

No one tells me what she whispered,

if she kissed my forehead,

or if she turned away so quickly

that she never dared to look back.

All I have is a date on paper,

a birth certificate that feels more like

a question mark than a record,

and the faint echo of a name

that vanished like smoke.

They tell me I was lucky.

Lucky to be chosen.

Lucky to be saved.

Lucky to be placed into a home

where soft hands carried me instead of cold wind,

where laughter wrapped around me

instead of loneliness.

And they’re right—

I grew up safe,

with stories before bedtime and birthday candles

that never forgot my name.

I had a room filled with toys

and a kitchen that always smelled of warmth.

I was loved so deeply that I never doubted it.

Yet there is a hollow place inside me,

a pocket of air I cannot fill,

where another story hums beneath my ribs.

In dreams, I sometimes see her:

a shadowed figure at the edge of a field,

dark hair falling like curtains around her face.

She hums a lullaby I almost remember,

her voice carried on the wind,

so soft I wake with tears I can’t explain.

I wonder if she wonders about me—

if she counts the years the way I do.

If she imagines me taller now,

with a laugh that isn’t hers

and hands that don’t resemble her own.

I wonder if she feels the loss like a ghost,

pressing against her heart on quiet nights,

the way I do.

And yet—love is wide.

Love is not a choice between one sky or another.

It stretches, a bridge between two worlds,

and I walk it every day.

I am both the child she carried

and the child they raised.

I am grief and gratitude braided together,

pain stitched with joy.

I am the wound and the balm,

the missing and the found.

Growing up, my parents gave me more than safety—

they gave me roots.

Roots that wound deep into soft soil,

into laughter,

into faith that family is built

not just by blood, but by choosing,

again and again,

to love someone fiercely enough

to call them yours.

They carried me through storms

and celebrated my smallest victories,

cheered at every recital and graduation,

stood by me when I doubted who I was.

But there are nights when the questions

still slip beneath my door,

curling around me like mist:

Who held me first?

Did she love me?

Was I a heartbreak she never healed from,

or a secret she folded neatly

and tucked into the darkest drawer?

These thoughts are not daggers—

only whispers.

And even when they ache,

they remind me I am made of more than absence.

I carry both worlds in my chest,

two skies stitched together

by the hands that raised me

and the hands that let me go.

This is not a tragedy,

nor a fairy tale.

It is a tapestry woven with threads

of surrender and sacrifice,

loss and salvation.

Every choice she made

and every choice they made

has led me here—

standing, breathing,

loved beyond measure.

And though I may never trace the beginning,

never hear that first lullaby,

I know this:

My story is not just survival.

It is a testament.

I am proof that love can grow in strange soil,

that family can be chosen and still feel like destiny.

I am not whole, not broken.

I am something else entirely—

a child of both silence and song,

rooted beneath two skies,

living proof that even the deepest loss

can give way to light.