you’ll never be enough. amidst the Beckys/Natalies/Emilys you can see an
Asian American woman drowning in the waters separating her from
her home country. you catch
the love of your life talking to a 5’5” brunette & she touches his arm as she laughs, so
excruciatingly beautiful & obnoxiously different from you. yet here you are, torn in the
gaps between your culture & still learning how to say
I love you in your mother tongue. there are no girls like you on television. ma warns us against
the bad men, the ones that press bruises against the petal-leaf skin of breast. but
here you are, still so fucking chaste & why can’t i be like the white girls on the screen? maybe
we’re all born to wear cheongsam / sari / forever, never to be debauched by the voguish
design of losing virginity // but
your lover tells you he loves Monica ‘cuz she’s blonde & white & her boobs are bigger.
all you can do is grin & bleach your hair because your 头发 / बाल / buhok / is the emblem
of what you can never have, a talisman that
wards off the men you fall for. eurocentrism is ubiquitous. even the men who
taught you how to fold origami / make mandu / throw gulal / play qanun / love the girls
who look nothing like you.
the boy you love tells you about how he fucked Heather in the back of the mall
& you want to scream but / your mother calls you down for dinner. elders eat first. let
the teenage girls starve. starve for a love never meant to be ours, eternally ravenous for
something we can never have. trapped by our oiled curls & olive skin & small eyes & forever
envious of the girls who so easily
receive the love we would die for. //
my love, i fear i will never be enough for you.
WILDsound Writing Festival 