Slur

It was me, in my bikini,
And my glasses.
And the latter was failing its job.

Water bubbled over my chest,
Lenses clouded until I could only see
Spots of my friends and soda-can blurs.

I clenched my jaw as I took them off
while laughing at a joke
I couldn’t really hear.

“You look so Chinese without them,”
She said,
Like she was saying my eyes were brown.

You look so, very, unbearingly
Chinese.
I heard her say
In a way
That was too much to handle,
Too horrifying to see.

It’s funny though.
Other Asian friends were trading glasses
For contacts and societally accepted beauty.
I guess it had to be the opposite for me.

By: Abigail Yang