Rosa King
Act I: Gift of Absence in Color (Excerpt)
Are all gifts meant for me?
Gifts are my love language, adorned in sparkles, sequins, and bright pink. The translucent rose pink
when a prism hits the windows at the perfect lighting to reveal slivers of pink. The pastel pink of my
tongue. The pink of my skin when it blushes scarlet beneath a deep golden brown. I love pink and
the way it makes my skin pop. An iridescent pink rainbow, obscuring the hurricane it was born from
in another land.
The day I met her, my first mother, I wore bright fuchsia. And her cheeks flushed coral. I spent so
much time imagining the various shades of pink and how the shades would explode in bursts when
we meet for the first time.
No, I lied.
This meeting would be the second time, after my birth. Their names of the shades. Rose. Coral.
Carnation. Fuchsia. The shades faded into my memories. Lighter. Light. The pink light like dust.
Hovering in the air and crashing into the barren concrete beneath me. It became a color that
resembled the sand, mixed with the dirt below the hard exterior. Morphing into a deep magenta.
The metamorphosis was beautiful. And during that time, the time when the colors faded, I no
longer knew if I was alive or dead.
Did I imagine our meeting each other? Did she have the same memories as me?
Hola, said my birth mother with a smile, muy joven. She had a sweet and inviting smile as she tilted her
head in thought. She leaned in for a hug and I followed. We met outside in a New York City Park,
swirls of carnation pink weaving in and out, through our bodies. An aroma of sweet cherries and
cloves drifting through the air. Traces of pink glitter left on my first mother and I as a remembrance
that we were once there at this park together. Again. And then the glitter dropped one by one to the
ground, disappearing into the earth. The George Washington Statue towering over us, I glanced at
my first mother’s eyes.
That means young, I said to my birth mother, ¿verdad? Her eyebrows furrowed and she nodded her
head up and down. We both tilted our heads the same way and shared a set of dimples and thin
eyebrows with a heart-shaped curve at the top of our rouged lips. I silently stared at the woman’s
body that gave birth to me.
Although we were now only inches apart, there was a distance between us. It appeared as an infinite
number of cerulean blue seas, strung together, blocking us from one another. Sparkles of glitter
glistening beneath us. Our bodies somehow floating
yet unable
to touch.
Gifts are my love language, adorned in sparkles, sequins, and bright pink. The translucent rose pink
when a prism hits the windows at the perfect lighting to reveal slivers of pink. The pastel pink of my
tongue. The pink of my skin when it blushes scarlet beneath a deep golden brown. I love pink and
the way it makes my skin pop. An iridescent pink rainbow, obscuring the hurricane it was born from
in another land.
The day I met her, my first mother, I wore bright fuchsia. And her cheeks flushed coral. I spent so
much time imagining the various shades of pink and how the shades would explode in bursts when
we meet for the first time.
No, I lied.
This meeting would be the second time, after my birth. Their names of the shades. Rose. Coral.
Carnation. Fuchsia. The shades faded into my memories. Lighter. Light. The pink light like dust.
Hovering in the air and crashing into the barren concrete beneath me. It became a color that
resembled the sand, mixed with the dirt below the hard exterior. Morphing into a deep magenta.
The metamorphosis was beautiful. And during that time, the time when the colors faded, I no
longer knew if I was alive or dead.
Did I imagine our meeting each other? Did she have the same memories as me?
Hola, said my birth mother with a smile, muy joven. She had a sweet and inviting smile as she tilted her
head in thought. She leaned in for a hug and I followed. We met outside in a New York City Park,
swirls of carnation pink weaving in and out, through our bodies. An aroma of sweet cherries and
cloves drifting through the air. Traces of pink glitter left on my first mother and I as a remembrance
that we were once there at this park together. Again. And then the glitter dropped one by one to the
ground, disappearing into the earth. The George Washington Statue towering over us, I glanced at
my first mother’s eyes.
That means young, I said to my birth mother, ¿verdad? Her eyebrows furrowed and she nodded her
head up and down. We both tilted our heads the same way and shared a set of dimples and thin
eyebrows with a heart-shaped curve at the top of our rouged lips. I silently stared at the woman’s
body that gave birth to me.
Although we were now only inches apart, there was a distance between us. It appeared as an infinite
number of cerulean blue seas, strung together, blocking us from one another. Sparkles of glitter
glistening beneath us. Our bodies somehow floating
yet unable
to touch.
Rosa King is an Afro-Honduran writer, poet, transracial and intercountry adoptee. She is a 2025 Juniper Summer Writing Institute alum, the recipient of the Lojo Foundation scholarship for the 2023 Community of Writers Nonfiction/Memoir Workshop, and a 2022 San Francisco’s Writers Grotto, Rooted & Written Fellow. She holds an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco, is an alum of Santa Clara University, and a recipient of the Justin T. McCarthy Oratory Award in Storytelling. King’s writing explores the intersectionality of identities as a Black/Indigenous adopted person. Her essay, Good Hair, published by KQED and appearing on NPR’s Perspectives radio show, is part of her hybrid-genre project focused on the concept of body ownership within the international adoption industry. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and three-year-old son.