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Not Equal to Family (Reduced Down to Me)

By Ryan Jafar Artes

If
Mother + Father = Me

But
Mother + Father + Me ≠ Family

Then
Mother + Father - Me = Family

If
A + B = C

And
A = my Adoptive

And
B = my Birth

Then
B(Mother + Father) - Me = Family

And
A(Mother + Father) + Me = Family

Meaning
A(Mother + Father) + Me = B(Mother + Father) - Me

= Family
I divide by A and B

Subtracting and adding Me
As I attempt to balance the equation

I disappear completely
And appear as too many versions of myself

While all sets of my Mothers and Fathers remain whole
I end up divided by my Fami(lies)

Half way in each
Fully in neither

My equation never balances
And I never have my family

As I am somehow at once too absent and too present
In that which belongs to me

A simultaneous nightmare and dream
Rendering figures at once known and unknown

Only the figures are not numbers
They are my parents

And my parents are not fixed
But rather a constant variable

As I seek answers that do not exist
To questions that do not make sense in the second place

Though I have already been taken from and by the first place
Which is from and by my family

Who divide me
Never carrying me when nothing adds up

And I must add myself back to myself
To become whole

Leaving behind that which does not make me feel complete
The families I do and do not know

Because
C = Child

And
The Child is me

And
My Birth Parents are missing

Though perhaps
A = Abandoned

And
B = Bought

And
C = Commodity

And I begin to tally
The ways in which adoption has ruined my life

And only I lose my families
And only I lose my childhoods

As only I carry my/self
As I return to only myself


 

 

 

Listen as Ryan Jafar Artes reads Not Equal to Family (Reduced Down to Me).
Added: Friday, May 23, 2025  /  Used with permission.
Ryan Jafar Artes
Photo by David Gray Wright.

Ryan Jafar Artes (he/she/they) is an activist, memoirist, and poet. Ryan’s work re-imagines culture via cultural renaissance from their perspective as a transracial transnational South Asian Indian American adoptee. Ryan hosts The Adoptee Open Mic and teaches virtual writing classes to support their activism and art.

Ryan is the Grand Prize Winner for Poetry of the inaugural Dream, Create, Liberate: A Future Without Family Policing contest by upEND Movement. Ryan’s poem “8,049 Miles” was a finalist in the 2021 Prometheus Unbound Competition and is featured in the accompanying anthology. Ryan’s work appears in Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, and anthologies published by Querencia Press, Moonstone Arts Center, and Capturing Fire Press.

Image Description: Ryan Jafar Artes stands in front of shelves displaying memorabilia and colorful tsatskis. Ryan smiles and faces forward with his hair pulled up and away from her face. They are wearing a black polo shirt with the buttons unbuttoned.

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