paint me like one of your white girls

---

Ginny Cho

 

leave red marks

and bruises

on my body so that no inch

of my yellow skin shows.

trample over me,

step on me,

conquer me

with your dirty shoes

that you don’t take off

in the house.

 

yell at me,

curse at my parents

—you don’t even know

what respect is

anyway.

 

scream my

english name

in the bedroom;

you never asked for

my korean name

not that you’ll

even try to pronounce it.

 

spit out

every taste of

my body,

brush your teeth

for an hour,

get rid of the

“asianness”

invading your

“whiteness.”

 

but love me.

 

i don’t dare to

take my shoes off,

keep the dirt and bugs

in the bedroom

as our audience.

 

i don’t dare to

speak my mother tongue

when i’m calling my parents

in front of you;

they ask,

why are you speaking english?

i respond,

because i’m american.

 

i don’t dare to

eat kimchi jjigae

before we meet,

brush my teeth for an hour,

drown myself in perfume

if you call me out of nowhere.

 

so please love me,

i’m trying to lose

my color,

powder myself white

so that you can finally

paint me.

 

 

---

Ginny Cho is a second-year student in the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy at Rutgers University. She is from Mahwah, New Jersey. Her writing was recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, Carl Sandburg Poetry Contest, Walt Whitman Poetry Contest, and many more. In her free time, she enjoys listening to K-Pop, indie, and R&B music. Her favorite artists are Seventeen, Lauv, and george.