What’s Remembered, What’s Forgotten
On the first day
of summer camp,
the counselor
introduces her two
newly-adopted sons,
biological brothers
from Brazil. They’re
6 and 7, old enough
to remember their
former lives.
My son volunteers
that he is Inuit, and
recently new to our
family. I choose not
to embarrass him, not
to contradict him with
my memory of his birth,
our bodies parting ways.
I leave him with his story
intact, a child’s imagined
version of a different life,
the true story of small boys,
who remember the journey
from before to now.
Martha Christina was born and raised in Indiana. She earned a BA in Spanish from IU Bloomington, and married in Beck Chapel there. She now lives in Bristol, RI, but considers herself a Hoosier-at-heart. She has published two full-length collections, Staying Found (Fleur de lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press), both of which contain poems set in Indiana. Individual poems appear recently in Crab Orchard Review, Star 82 Review, and Tiny Seed Journal.