Daughter delivered by an attendant:
silent and watchful in your orphanage smock
with the cartoon dog, and pilled mended pants.
A smell of mildew came from your shock
of sweaty, cropped black hair. Stuck to your chest,
in English and Chinese a name tag read
Happy Springtime: a name pressed
upon you by no father, mother. Closeted
from the world before you came to us, as if
in some ancient tomb carving of a child
rising from the grave in a flowing shift.
Freed from the humid earth, she almost smiles.
You don’t remember, but love to be told
how they brought you through the doors and you were ours.
But buried in you is that place, still. Were you cold,
solitary, left wanting, maybe for hours . . .
Don’t go there, I tell myself. Instead,
I grab you and inhale your fragrant head.
—Carole Bernstein, from Buried Alive—A To-Do List