i am a child of circumstance

two families arrange a marriage

and by chance the participants

(far too young to even consider

such a heavy commitment, the words

“i do,” unreal and empty but terrifying

until, of course, my mother is born)

become my grandparents

i am enamored with old photographs

i flip through page after page after page

tracing my grandmother’s face and

finding my mother and myself in the lines

i am softened by the way we all look alike

i seat myself across my mirror and take in

my grandmother’s cheekbones,

my uncle’s crooked grin

every time i am told i look like my mother

i feel as if i have the sun itself at my fingertips

then i find the wedding photos

and i see my grandmother—

only a year older than i am now—

a child expected to bear the children

of a man she hardly knows—

a child in a wedding dress scowling

as she sacrifices a chance to go to school

for the promise of safety and stability

and storms swirl inside my heart

but she was lucky

my grandfather was a good man

i never knew him but

i find photos of him, too

him doing his military service

bent over the side of a truck, beaming

as he scratches the head of a stowaway puppy

immortalized in shades of yellow and brown

in the folds of paper eternally crinkled like

the corners of his eyes as he smiles

and i know he is a good man

and i wonder if i look like him, too

the way i look like my mother

and my grandmother

and my father

and his mother and father

and my uncles

and my aunts

i see fragments of myself at every reunion

and i see echos of these reunions in every reflection

and i find every reflection in every old photo

and i know that while i am a child of circumstance,

i am a child of love, too.