In A Perfect World Poem by Sylvia Gong

My Pakistani nose is a mountain peak,
Exploding from my face like the bombs they say we drop
In a perfect world, I would milk the brownness from my nose
An excess of mass I could peel from my face like it was nothing more than the tasteless skin of a forbidden fruit

I am dirt brown, they tell me
My skin a stubborn stain in society
In a perfect world, I would drain myself of color
Until I am white, as pure, as they are

My eyebrows are thicker than lava,
Each strand of hair a pesky weed that must be plucked
In a perfect world, I would be free of the wasteland on my forehead
Until my hedges are trimmed to perfection

My accent means lower class and uneducation
Each misspoken syllable a punch in the gut
In a perfect world, I would scrape my tongue clean of my ancestry
Clean of any dirty remnants of our past