My husband was a stranger

My husband
Was a stranger
To his kin:
Ripped from the resting bosom
Of his desperate mother,
And transported

To another town,
Where housewives
Needing pin money
Took in Indian babies,
Poor things.

My husband
Was adopted,
Grafted in,
Accepted
By another family,
A mother saw
His desperate face
And could not
Look away.

He sat among them
Slightly darker,
A little brother
Added on
Afterthought
A broken piece
Forced to fit.

This son
Of Others
Became Theirs
And he was never told
Why or where the place
He came from,
He was there,
And that was all.

My husband
Grew up that way
A stranger to his kin,
A stranger to his skin.