She’s always been an alien within:
a cuckoo incubated in the nest
her parents built. Beneath that olive skin
exists a creature other than the rest,
diverging early in her history.
She’s waiting yet to recognize her peers
and thinks she’s ready for their company,
but she’s been looking now for 60 years.

She recollects when she was 2 years old
(and learns that others don’t remember then),
she thought unlike her parents. She controlled
the little that she could, and sought for when
a cuckoo grown, mature and barely masked,
she’d answer all the questions no one asked.