Dear Samuel Feldman,

Do you know what DNA looks like?

Double Helix, with a backbone made out of sugar.

molding the way we look,

molding the way we move,

social constructions made by uncontrollable chance.

Capitalize off of the way your atoms shake and quiver,

yours makes you a white man.

Someone walking this earth with no fear

of words, actions, people’s thoughts.

Privilege.

Yours gives you privilege.

Now here I am:

Adenine and Thymine,

Guanine and Cytosine,

pairs identical to those of yours,

difference: the outcome.

mine make me an Asian Women,

yellow skin, freckled,

hair the color of railroad tracks,

yet soft as the sand in Manzanar,

complete with invisibility.

Someone who walks this earth with the fear of

words, actions, of people’s thoughts.

Waiting to stumble on hate,

docile and inconvenient to all white

people, space, existence.

The world that prides you, reminds me of

news of the Chinese virus,

living where the fox-eye trend is the new rage.

Masks up, just around me, to protect themselves from an Asian,

run-on words for extra help with English for the Asian,

too dumb for an Asian, B doesn’t sound like enough,

Dirty, cheap, slanted, smelly because I’m Asian,

On a run to cleanse myself, hearing a screamed,

Chink —and as they drove off––

leaving me with the strain of my involuntary DNA.

Yet white men like you pass my photo around as if,

You’d even have the ability to fuck the shit out of me.

   (And yes. I mean FUCK and nothing else.)

Exoticized to the point to where I don’t have a say,

but trust when I say yours will never be manhood.

So who are you,

laying hands on a woman who tried to help?

Who did nothing but ask you to reflect on your actions,

to go home?

Go home.

To attack, leaving

her hands scratched and stained

with the humiliation of trying to stand before you and plead?

The irony of that phrase!

The helpless.

Uninsured trying to help—

     Why did you not pay her bills?

          A penny to pay off a bill of damages,

     Undetected to the eye.

Samuel Feldman-

the atoms that makes up your DNA—

deformed, inhumane,

Phosphate backbones with holes—

are nothing like mine.

Count your blessings,

because that’s all you have.