I get asked about my skin
First grade
Moving in
Deep breathes
Tai sao
Minh ở đây?
Oh okay how about we try kindie?
But in kindie
I'm the
Biggest one
Getting smallest done
Glances
Whys
Apologize
Just smile
So they don't think you're dumb
And soon you can go home
But home, is four hours away
And as I stay under the only roof I find familiar
Mum
I can't remember
Mum
These textbook walls
Hang two languages I barely know
Mum when can we go
I'm scared
Help me mum
Help con cái này
I don't understand cái này
Tại sao con phair học cái này
Mum
Mum, we're going home
I'm nine now and we're going home
But why does home feel like eyes that look like mine but don't recognize me
As I backtrack
Collecting words like artifacts
I am laughed at because I can't spell
Because I can't read the same or think the same
I bear a name
Of a girl who doesn't even exist
And I'm here now, and we do think the same
Yet I'm still asked about my skin
Laminated cardboard flesh thick paper thin
Skin to which I am no less a tourist
They say, that I'm born in the States
But I'm not mixed race
Yet it isn't offensive
When you ask about the absence of my accent
Or my eyes
These whys I don't mind explaining
It just gets confusing sometimes
When my cheeks flush changing languages mid-way
And there are days when I just don't know
Whether it is wrong for me to feel so alien yet call this nationality mine
I am, fine
But home
I've just never been able to allow myself to feel fully comfortable around you
Home, I know I'll be leaving again
Home, I don't know what to make of you
Or what I am able to make of you, and whether it's enough
I'm this Asian batter
White, cookie cutter
White, too white
To understand
To yellow to comprehend
Yellow
Too yellow
Read
All the manuals
But my fingers still get sliced on the corners of how
Could I let my roots be misplaced?
Gone to waste
Cut off
And regrown
Roots, never known
For you to grow where you were planted
Well I moved
And I'll still be moving
Tattooing each new grin
Skin I am neither, yet I am all
I am, so many things