The Foreigner

he was Asian, but never quite Asian enough.

She looked like everyone else on the subway – brown eyes, black hair, tan skin. At first glance, she blended in. But the moment she opened her mouth, people could tell she was strange. She spoke elementary-level Mandarin, often pronouncing the simplest words incorrectly. There was always a slight hesitation in her tone, an unnatural rhythm to her sentences. They knew instantly she was not from there. She was a foreigner. 

Back in North America, things were different. Granted, she looked different, but everyone here did. No one really knew who was from where, because in a country built on immigration, everyone came from somewhere else. Everyone was a foreigner in some way, but that didn’t matter because together, people formed communities and created places to belong.

She realized she didn’t need to fit perfectly into one world.

She might be a foreigner in some places, but not here. Here, she felt at home.