I meet my birthmother in August
when mugunghwa blossoms.
 
This is what I hope for at least.
The flower withstands rusts and smuts.
 
It is the end of August now
and I am waiting.
 
Will she want to meet me?
Is she alive?
 
Maybe it would be more auspicious
to meet in October, the end of the season,
 
two months after she had given birth.
She gave me to a taxi driver
 
and his family for safekeeping,
placed like a poem
 
looking for an audience,
a reader to say—I see you,
 
and I will hold you between my fingers
like a delicate, pulpwood treasure.