Nurture or Nature?

By Tessa Baum

JUN 11, 2024

In the waiting room, 
box after box
           Female
                         Asian
                                     Family history: unknown
I wonder about my blood and biology
I question my hands and high cheekbones.
I mourn my own smile and teeth
grieving the genes and flesh I’ll never meet.
The potential of a brother thousands 
of miles away
ignorant of my existence. 

Nurture or nature?

I had read that a child’s DNA can linger 
in the body decades after birth.
How long did I stay with her, 
                                                    stalling for more time?
Am I still with her now?
A sliver of a memory I’ll never quite grasp
I muse the evening down to the bone,
Are my introspections a trigger?
A spark, powerful enough to transcend
             language 
                          culture,
                                       and time
Do they reach her, too?
It’s comforting
these questions loiter 
walking the halls where memory should be.
I can become content with the echoes
of what I have of her. 

Nurture or nature?

If I could not be born from my mother’s body 
then I insist I was born from her mind
smoothed out by ebb and flow, 
tumbling waves of determination, dry humor. 
Like a daughter of Athena, 
her sculpture, careful craft of intellect and heart.
Aflame in my veins dwell counterweights 
on tilting scales
              her pessimistic persistence
              a tungsten gilded will that would fight even with the ending world
                         her deep blue confidence 
                         filled with memories and melancholy 
                         pacified with years of emotional tillage
	                                   I hold it all.

Nurture or nature?

If I could not be born from my mother’s body 
then I insist I was born from her voice.
My eggshell heart annealed, nourished 
by her stories of 
            carefully chosen family
            childhood dinner tables filled with laughter and full bellies
                         heartstrings braided thrice
                         pretty pink stains, like beets on cotton, love persists

I could not be born from my mother’s body.
I do not share her gray eyes
fair skin or stormy heart.
And, although our aptitudes pull from each other,
my hands speak a more visual language,
nine months could not make a difference. 
I insist that nurture is over nature.

Tessa Baum is a Boston-based poet.