You learned the wrong lesson, Nikki.
Your brothers were chased by other boys
inflated by white privilege and testosterone,
they ripped the turbans off of Mitti and Charan’s heads
and yanked their long hair until tears filled their eyes
like overripe mangoes ready to burst.
They cut their hair that day,
their pride falling
to the linoleum floor
in dense, black clumps.

That was the day you decided to change your name.
You realized there was no room for a place
in South Carolina for a girl named Nimrata Randhawa.
And when Republican State Senator Knotts
called you and Obama a “fucking raghead”
you decided to prove him wrong
by standing for a platform
even whiter and richer than his.
This is the party you’ve joined,
the same one that push polled in the primary
calling you a Muslim, as if such a thing were a crime,
questioned your patriotism,
and accused you of cheating on your husband.

Even as you claim to be pro-life,
you cut holes in the social safety net,
lower wages, smash unions, and ensure
that those babies will join a cycle of poverty
that your parents left India to escape.
You are making this a country worth leaving.

Can you taste the irony, Nikki?
You sponsored state legislation that mirrored Arizona’s SB1070.
And I wonder how long it will be
until the state trooper stops you
for being too foreign, too brown, too dark
and demands your papers,
jackboots blacked, badge shined,
enforcing the laws of xenophobes
that cuss you on the street
on the internet, and behind closed doors.
Aidia, Maria, and Sofia
working 16 hours a day
cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors
are not as different from you
as you’d like to believe.

Your reflection never looked pretty to you,
but you never asked why.
You just filed for a name change
and registered as a Republican.
Maybe this was the only America
that you were shown.

It doesn’t matter if you wear the varsity jacket, Nikki,
you’re still not going to get invited
to the good parties.
You can paint your face white
but they still won’t throw you the ball.

And if the cost of acceptance
is to become that which hates you,
Asian, Indian, woman, brown then
Nikki, the truth is
that you don’t need to be kidnapped
to develop Stockholm Syndrome.