To the Boy on Tinder Who Said "I Really Wanna Try a Foreign Girl"
BY NYDIA
I don’t know at what age I realized I was the “other” the “strange and unfamiliar” –
but it seeps in between lips I’ve kissed and glides deeper into the back of my throat as the mouths, the tongues of boys I think I love attempt to push those thoughts back into the pit they came from but that’s just it- the word rests in the pit of my stomach. It makes me sick to my core. You see me and think: foreign. Ask me where I’m really from. As if you didn’t know your mother birthed you. I came from my mother’s vagina, you asshole. I came from a generation of chingonas I came from thick and heavy accents that taught me how to say fuck off in more than one language. Wondering if the boy in my bedroom sees me and thinks of me “exotic” or “spicy”. He tells me I’m beautiful and I hold my breath for 2 seconds hoping that’s where his sentence ends. Dear shallow, shitty boy on Tinder- you are not the first to want to be called papi and you probably won’t be the last but I really wanted to know what you find most compelling of this “foreignness”? These things you find cute and sexy come from a history of trauma, From slavery and dictatorships, From genocide and poverty, I am not another conquest. Ask me about dark hair and brown skin. Ask me again where I’m actually from. I really wanna tell you, my culture is not yours to sexualize. |