Storks Don't Bring Perfect Babies.

A poem about the foster care system through the eyes of the foster parent's bio-child.

Storks don’t bring perfect babies
If that’s what you’d call them.
“Call what? The storks or the babies?
Are you talking about them?”

Both, I guess
They’re just not what they seem.
“What are you saying,
What does that mean?”

Well, I don’t know if you know,
But I’ve seen a few things.
Like the storks, they’re just people,
They don’t have any wings.

There are a lot of them,
I’ve seen them; they work together,
Each with their roles,
It’s like they say, “birds of a feather.”

They have a funny name,
The flock of them, yes.
They go by a title
Along the lines of DCFS.

My mom talks to them,
They seem to always be in touch,
Talking about the house,
The children, babies, and such.

Speaking of babies,
I suppose you want to know?
The babies are different, too,
And they don’t stay; most the time they go.

My parents welcome them in
Every couple of months or yearly.
They come and live in the house
And my parents love them dearly.

The babies are not perfect,
And they’re hardly smaller than me.
Sometimes, they’re big and scary
And they yell or throw or scream.

My mom tells me that they’re scared
They’re hurt; they need to be loved.
So, every morning, she gets up
And faces the day, unafraid of being judged.

I don’t know how Mom and Dad do it,
Because it’s often too much to see,
But they manage to love them
And they manage, still, to love me.

I hope one day to be like them.
To be like my mom and dad.
I hope to love the people that are hard,
The people who might seem bad.

Because two things I’ve learned
As I grew up in this home
One is that people just need
To be loved by someone.

The other, I have to say,
It might sound odd to you at first,
But I say it here today,
It’s something well-rehearsed.

Storks don't bring perfect babies,
They never have and never will.
But I hope if they bring another,
For a moment, time will stand still.

So I can have a moment,
To listen to her breathing.
Her harsh mechanical breaths
Before she ends up leaving.

Because storks don’t bring perfect babies,
They need tubes just to breathe.
Storks don't bring perfect babies,
They’ll yell, and sometimes they freeze.

Storks don't bring perfect babies,
They need therapy and visits. They need time.
I don’t have much to give them,
But I hope this time, I can give them mine.