Originally published in the artist book ROOTS: Korean Diaspora, organized and crafted by Andre Lee Bassuet (2023). Available for purchase here.

Don’t think about it.

Don’t think about your body: how you feel it all over, every fold of flesh hanging off your bones, squeezing against your clothes. Don’t think about the chocolate gelato you decided to eat three hours ago, when you were happy. You are not happy now.

Don’t think about how cold you are. Don’t think about how much your face still burns somehow. Your hanging, drooping face, more bulldog than girl. You dared. You dared to think otherwise. You are wrong.

Don’t think about how exposed you feel, despite layers and layers of coats. You can’t help but shiver at the memory. Of how intently he looked at you—so unlike the way he doesn’t look at you in school, which should have been the reddest of flags—while you sat side by side in front of the apartment complex in Seoul both of your families call home, for now. Of how you almost told him everything. How the ID in your wallet marks you as a dependent. Property of the Department of Defense. How Dad’s colleagues understand that legally, they have to acknowledge him, you, your whole family of faces as U.S. citizens, but somewhere in their brains, somewhere along the way, it stops computing. Because I don’t actually look like someone who could belong anywhere. It goes against ideas of your kind and my kind, a kind you did not choose, but here we are, my kind, your kind, the same kind. How it is put to the test, over and over again: prove that you deserve our kindness.

Don’t think about how you almost told him that every night, you yell over and over the names of all of the bases your family’s been assigned to, Riley, Campbell, Bragg, Lewis. Reciting over and over: I was born in an army hospital, an army hospital in Washington, D.C., the nation’s fucking capital! I know my military acronyms, and I know all of the details of the war in which my people killed my other people used my other people killed my other people for and in and over and through, better than you, better than you ever will, do you fucking understand!

How you said, “I’m a lot of things,” and he replied, “ah,” then looked down at his brown-skinned hands. “Me too.”

Don’t think about how his arm pressed against yours for ten seconds. How he didn’t pull away. How the touch of your flesh, all your flesh, hadn’t made him recoil.

Don’t think about how none of that mattered tonight in the auditorium. Because Dylan Garcia asked Marley Chase to the winter formal, as he was going to, as he was always going to. You made eye contact tonight, accidentally, because when his gaze happened to encounter you, halfway across the auditorium, his throat hitched, imperceptible to everyone except you. He turned away with too-natural precision and pretended like he never saw you at all. Don’t think about the sharp pang that pierced your chest and spread through it like poison.

The night is cold and clear. I walk through Gate 13, past the revolving bars and out into Korea. The air is cold and foreign. “Who are you?” it asks.

I descend into Samgakji Station. There are people in the station, buying tickets, grabbing corn tea, making calls on their smartphones. Do they know where I came from? Do they know I live in two countries every day? Can they tell me where I’m supposed to go? Would they claim me if I told them both of my names? If I spoke their language, told them that it’s also mine? When I try to in my dreams, they just point and laugh.

The subway car rattles. I stand numb and dumb. Station after station passes by in a blur. I hold onto one of the handlebars inside the Line 4 subway car and hang there. People swarm in, people swarm out. I hang there.

Don’t think about your mom, who is going to greet you when you arrive home late with a soft smile, as though she sees something good in you.

The next stop is Dongdaemun, sing-songs the automated subway voice. The next stop is Dongdaemun. Da eum yeok eun Dongdaemun, Dongdaemun yeok imnida. Ruby Hong, Hong Yoon-hee, nugu ya, nugu ya, who would ever want you?

I begin to cry.