there is pretense of the tongue doing exactly what it should. the tastebuds are always thirsty and cracks form into craters. the tongue weaves ungraceful threads between languages. it is an intoxicated mass without a home.
i love my name. it is my grandpa’s gift and it connects me to him. i love my name. i love it. they ask for a name to call when a table is ready. i say not my name. today it feels better to throw someone else’s name into the fire.
an epithet is common when your skin is yellow. it follows you in your looks, in your achievements. it follows you in your breaths, a tendriled fog in wintertime. your waking hours are a sleepless dream filled with, “for an asian girl.”
i read books to my students. i try to read books that show rainbow children. i flip the page and see the asian girl and hate myself for dreading it and try to not hate it and try to look normal. look normal. hope today i don’t have to teach an impromptu lesson on racial sensitivity. hope today to feel pressureless. this is a dream.
i am alone. they are a rowdy bunch. i pass by. i am small. i am flowering mold in the cracks between bricks. a little boy’s voice echoes “flat face” in my memory and i’m wishing i’m nothing.
at the last open mic a white man comes up to me and says, “where did you say you were from again?” i don’t share much.
one time i back out too slow or park too fast or merge too average or yield too easily or don’t yield at all. i turn my head away from the window. i pull up the mask i don’t need. “i saw the straight black hair, you know,” they say in a very real place in my brain.
sometimes it is nice to be at a bar. the noise is nice, a noisy noise to calm the silent noise inside. i feel the opportunities pulsating. i’ve put on lipstick. i’ve come to strut. i’ve got beers enough to feel cool girl cool. dude approaches. i think this is excitement. he walks toward a friend. this pretense occurs often. this leaving of my physical body.
i try on all the glasses. i buy glasses without nose pads. it is too late and the glasses slip down infinitely; they are giant slugs on my flat face. it is a physical reminder that i have forgotten my body in this style, in this market, in this country, in this world. i am flowering mold and there’s not enough money or time or space or breath to make glasses feel welcome on a flat face.
once i am young. i’m talking to my friend and my parents. my parents speak to me in korean. my friend speaks to me in english. my parents say something. i ask my friend what she thinks and she is puzzled. i forget she doesn’t understand what my parents say. i forget her parents don’t stir and flip and mix and fold with chopsticks. i forget she’s never been told to turn off the fan because she will die in her sleep. it is not that i am different, it is that i’ve forgotten to be the same. this leaving of my physical body.
it is not big. it is not fire. it is pinprick dews that sit on the yellow skin. on the tastebuds. on the too high cheeks and the too flat face. throughout the life that wear on this physical body.
