Writer | Artist | Adoptee
Thanksgiving will be small but not infelicitous. Which is to say there will be just three of us seated at the table, not the double-digit chair count of my childhood or some of the years during my time as a Wife. Though several others were invited, they've all found holiday homes for the day and... Continue Reading →
We're not supposed to disrupt your life. We're supposed to fit-in beautifully. Fill a gap, a hole in your heart, in your life. find object, 2020d. j. dawson (b. 1963)mixed media on vocabulary card3 x 6 inches (approx.) Baby caulk. We were in need of rescue, shelter, family (which we have before we meet, by... Continue Reading →
In pre-dawn stillThe wind comes once everyThree minutes, bellowing deep in the treesSlow, picks up speed, then stops. dark ghost trainwinds down, swapping arrivers fordepartersWhose gossamer trench coating shuffle wetLeaves adhere, our front window stained Chapel glass between worlds. Warm and dry,tamed storming, unpredictable rowdyTimetables of bluster and agenda, measures of syncopated nature, theruthless spiced... Continue Reading →
Every local watering-hole has that one female. You know: each lump and roll squeezed into an outfit meant for a 16-year old girl, maybe crowned by several-day-old salon hair propped up by a half can of aerosol hairspray. There's a bland but vague and checkered past slouching along behind her. (She's what my mother would... Continue Reading →
Cold Spring Harbor, 2016d. j. dawson (b. 1963)digital photograph, unaltered The last, and only time, she wrote was January of this year. It was as though she accidentally included me on an email with photo attachments, that's how odd and out of left field. But, it was family-related and it was sweet, baby birthday photos... Continue Reading →
One of the things adopted people lose through adoption is, most obviously, their family. This is the not-a-happy-ending side of things no one talked about, at least not until recently. As adopted people - or unwanted babies and children, as most of us began life as someone's shameful problem to solve - we were told... Continue Reading →
