I’m looking at the reflection in the bus window tonight and I don’t recognize the skin or the hair or the shape of the eyes looking back at me. It’s 11 PM and my shift just ended and my back feels like a row of rusted staples. My parents—the ones who raised me, the ones with the beige walls and the Sunday pot roast—they always told me it didn't matter. They said love is colorblind like that’s some kind of compliment. It’s not a compliment. It’s a LIE. It’s a lie they told themselves so they wouldn't have to look at the gap between my face and theirs every single day, every day. I found the papers last week in a shoebox under the water heater while I was looking for a wrench. Not a gold mine, just a name. A name that sounds like a bell ringing in a room I’ve never entered. I spent three hours on a library computer because my phone data ran out, clicking through records until my eyes burned. I’m looking for a ghost. I’m looking for a ghost who gave me this nose and this chin and then vanished into a city I can’t even find on a map without help. My mom (the one who bought me my first car, a total lemon) caught me looking at the tabs on my laptop. She looked at me like I’d slapped her. Like my curiosity was a betrayal, a deep and jagged betrayal. I went to that neighborhood today. The one on the east side with the signs I can’t read and the smell of spices that make my throat itch and my stomach growl at the same time. I walked into a grocery store and the woman behind the counter started talking to me in a language that sounded like water over stones. Fast and bright and expectant. I just stood there like a statue. I stood there like a stone. I had to tell her I didn't understand and the look she gave me—it wasn’t just disappointment. It was a dismissal. I look like the house but I don’t have the keys to the front door. I don't have the keys, I don't have the map, I don't have anything. I’m so damn furious that I have to pay sixty dollars for a DNA kit when I can barely afford the rent on this basement apartment. Sixty dollars is three days of groceries. It’s half a utility bill. I’m ANGRY that I have to buy back a history that was taken before I could even crawl. My father—the one who taught me how to change a tire—he keeps asking why I’m being so "difficult" lately. Difficult. Like it’s just weather. Like it isn’t a storm that’s been brewing for twenty-five years. He doesn’t get it. He can’t get it (he won't even try). His ancestors are all buried in the same three-mile radius in some flat town in Indiana. So here I am, sitting on the edge of my mattress that sags in the middle, staring at a screen that’s too bright for this hour. I feel like an actor who forgot their lines but the play is still going on. Everyone else knows the script. Everyone else knows where they belong. I’m just a placeholder. I’m a placeholder in a life that belongs to someone else. I look at my hands—brown and calloused from the warehouse—and they don’t match the white porcelain mug I’m holding. They don’t match the room. They don’t match the world. I just want to rip it all down. I want to rip it down and start over, but I don't even know what the foundation looks like...