I confess
I used to resent
This dark-haired, yellow-skinned dream I have.
This Korean dream I am
I carved, starved, punctured
I formed
my own wounded frame with these hands
my ancestors gave I used to strip it all away
Broken chopsticks and grains of sticky rice formed a trail
behind me as I picked each kernel off one by one
little by little to erase the very thing I was
and the very thing I didn’t ask to be
No more “You’re pretty for an Asian.”
No more side-eyes at my mother’s accent and my lack of one.
I just wanted
to be normal.
Normal.
White.
America.
White America,
I still think about that third-grade lunch period when a girl asked
to try a piece of my seaweed
How she pretended to gag when she tasted it
How she ran to the bathroom while they laughed
He laughed
She laughed
I laughed
So that I wouldn’t feel so alone
So you wouldn’t think
something was wrong
with me.
White America,
I spent all of middle school listening
to you tell me I’m not pretty
You handed me a pen and told me to draw
the parts of myself I wanted to change
and I shaded myself in completely
The hair I wished was blonder
The eyes I wished were bluer
Taller, the legs I wished were longer
I was dissipating into the whiteness
Only a handful of calories in my 12-year-old body
I listened
every time you said
I wasn’t pretty
To you I was
I am
quiet, agreeable, passive
Pretty China doll
The model minority
Yet you told me
you tell me
to stand
tall, be different, don’t feed
into the stereotypes
So I resisted
And I still resist it
But how can I
when all you can see
is quiet, agreeable, passive
Pretty China doll
The model minority
Selective vision, America
White bread lunch box, striking
me with my own chopsticks,
America, you snap and my foreign
tongue burns down to ashes
You wave your hand
and Scarlett Johansson’s suddenly Asian
This is your magic trick, America.
White America,
You say we’ve made
we’re making
progress
but how much time
do you need for your
progress?
I don’t want to play this game anymore
I want to like
you
I want to like
myself
This, if nothing else, I know.
Dear America,
America is
White America
It always has been.
I want to retrace the steps
I took the broken shards
I left the grains
I threw away.
I want to take it all back
The years I wasted
in self loathing
The time I spent letting you feed
me your sour fables
No more.
I’m making
my own progress
and I’m writing
my own stories
I am taking it all back.
I’m grasping
And gripping
and reaching
and running
and soaring
And I won’t
stop
or be silenced
I won’t let go
Because this, if nothing else, is mine.