at the hospital where i volunteer,
a well-meaning white male veteran asked me,
perhaps in the hopes of making small talk,
“where are you from?”
where am i from?
in my mind i answered:

where i’m from, my name is a typo,
a mistake,
that squiggly red line never fails to remind me that it has no place here.
“perhaps you meant ‘media’?” it asks,
because that makes much more sense in the header of my paper than my own name does;
because it would rather have a word that rolls easily off white tongues than attempt to understand a name that isn't straight from the bible.

where i’m from, a boy with skin the color of the blank piece of paper in front of him looks me in the eyes and states that he can be racist if he wants to.
when i confront him, he plays it off as a joke,
he doesn’t realize that finding that funny is white privilege,
he calls me dumb and brushes me off—
in a language he’s never heard of, my name means intelligence.

where i’m from, a white boy played aladdin in the fifth grade musical,
i got callbacks for jasmine even though i couldn’t sing her range,
and finally an Ethiopian girl got the part—
apparently having brown skin was the only requirement to play the princess,
but they wouldn’t let my brown-haired friend audition for the genie because the genie was written to be blond—
my mother later convinced me to quit theater.

where i’m from, i can’t walk down the aisle at target in traditional clothes without feeling judgmental eyes searing through the expensive fabric,
the cashier furrows her brows as she hands me the gift card i’ve just purchased, as if wondering whether they sell bollywood music on itunes—
(i wouldn’t know, i don't listen to it)
a girl outside blows smoke out of her mouth, adjusts her ohm tank top, and gives me a glare.
her forehead bears a silver, sparkling bindi,
in the moment, i curse my own plain black one,
later at home, i curse my mother for making me wear the outfit in public.

where i come from,
white means pure,
and brown means dirt,
brown means plain,
brown means ugly.
where i come from,
people turn their backs and shield their eyes,
makeup only comes in fifty shades of beige,
and the girls who desperately fill in their eyebrows now
are the same girls who used to ridicule my own—
where i come from my beauty is a trend,
and race is written in binary;
tongues carrying the burdens of my ancestors are mocked,
their voices too thick and their tones too heavy
to blend smoothly with the other contents of the melting pot.

but to the veteran i said
“i’m from San Jose."
and he,
after a long pause,
widened his eyes and said,
“me too."