My name is Naomi Kim, and this little piece is called, “So I slip out the door. Unnoticed, unmissed.”

Why had I thought it wouldn’t matter, the fact that I had grown up in the near-absence of other Asian Americans? In my small town I was used to my otherness, but tonight, in college, at this Asian American student gathering—this is a new kind of otherness, and it is worse.

Everyone here seems to share something I don’t. Certain ease, a certain kind of experience. I don’t feel Asian enough. Korean enough. I am all wrong in the one place I thought I would be right.

So I slip out the door. Unnoticed, unmissed. September is cool against my skin as I walk back to my dorm through the dark, alone.

When I step into the circles of light cast by the streetlamps, I see my discomfort, my confusion, nakedly exposed for a brief moment. Then I pass again into the shadows.