The last time being Asian felt easy was the time I didn’t know I was Asian yet.

It didn’t come all at once, but in p i e c e s , the way dim sum arrives, one hot cart of bamboo steamers at a time. At sixteen, my boyfriend’s Romanian family claims he’s not meant to date an Asian girl. At eighteen, I perform the Chinese Nutcracker dance, my white peers beside me, gold and red Dollar Store lanterns swinging from blonde buns, catching the light. At twenty, I move to Italy, an alien from an exotic galaxy far far away…

I’ve been crying, often. Really, a lot of it. Crying because I dream of motherhood. Because ancestors are dying and I can’t catch up. Because I’m losing balance on this tightrope, my bloodline cut short. Wong, wasted, write, weep – last names & last words begin with W. Tough and tender, I love what I do and yet I cannot make myself do it. It is hard to be diligent, when it is the structure itself that harms me. I can grieve or I can be hopeful and I don’t know if either makes a difference. The White Space still confines me, eyes squint as it blinds me. Wound and wheezing with the grip of your chokehold, yet still I wring my wounds for words because truth is not an optional ingredient.

If you told me to go back home, I wouldn’t move an inch, not out of self-defense, but because I have nowhere else to go. So I stand here dripping, the weight of another universe’s gravity on my eyelids. There’s no ending. It happens when it happens but it’s also always happening anyways.