Category: Prose

Different Types of Beginnings

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

“The memories are enough for me,”

I tell myself. It’s simply alright if we never get the chance to meet again, or explore what we could possibly have with one other. I am satisfied with the lessons I’ve learned from you, and I feel a release now that you’ve waivered from me. I no longer think of “what ifs”, or regret of missed chances, mourning a second chance and new beginning.  I’ve been thinking about the words I never got to say, many that you were waiting for, but I’ve been thinking and I’ve been feeling and I’ve been praying that perhaps, what you requested was far from what I was ready for. Your name is embedded in me, and our language is the easiest I have ever spoken, but the most difficult I find to forget for it flows between my teeth and through my lips like sugar. I hope we speak again someday, but I’ve only just found my sight again. I tell myself that perhaps for now, “the memories are enough for me.”

“Hello.”

Based on the past black and white photos, I am out of heart to give it up one more time. I am guarded, but you always catch me by surprise.  I think that it’s a friendly beginning to no more than a friendship composed of a few waves and content greetings. It won’t progress further than that, now that I’ve gotten a hold of my life, and I’m out of the spotlight.  I have become tired of a script written for me by another person, as if it is written by another sleight of hand. I can’t remember the time where he was friendly to me; or a time that I felt cherished, or simply cared-for. I started from an aura of this nothingness, but suddenly I am full – of life, and he couldn’t possibly take it from me this time. Yet, we meet as such a disposition. I always speak about someday, but beginnings are now difficult. I don’t want them to be the start of where I had ended. Yet, I respond, “Hello.” I hope that our memories are never enough.

“Good morning!”

You say, as we exchange smiles and waves because that is what we have become accustomed to. It is a glimpse to a beginning every time we speak sending butterflies throughout. What I think about is a new opening scene in a novel, free to start over in a new book, and mind set, use your imagination if you please. There are new intentions, new ideas, and new friendships –  all of which could possibly make me smile. It is all quite possible in this good morning.

“This is the last leg,”

I joke. He laughs loudly, and I notice a light to his face, I’ve never seen before. I think of new beginnings as I hear this new laughter abrupt. I feel as I’ve know you before, but this time, I feel that I could find you if I ever need you. I want to laugh with you, so I would like to someday just know if there was any other day or way I could possibly have another beginning. Always.

“High five!”

Half way through the year, and we’ve spoken a total of a few paragraphs totaling up to the first few chapters of my favorite book. It’s the exposition, and the characters have already untwined nothing but their names, how they move, and they talk, but nothing more… so far.

“Wait up!”

It never progresses further than speaking about the weather, but I stop, and always proceed to wait. I notice… you know. I’ll be your friend to notice the smallest parts of you like I over analyze every word in the books you may notice my nose is always in. I notice. You always pause when you see me walk by, and you always slow down when you see me walking feet behind you. Our lives seem to collide in more than one way, and I don’t mind meeting you over and over again, jut repeating our beginning. I notice, and this gives me hope; waiting for our conversation to progress, but I notice your eyes are always locked on my face, and I synchronize your motions, and that is somehow enough for me.

“I see you.”

I do. We have inside jokes – of odd looks, and small gestures that we have accumulated over this year. At this senior to senior dance the nursing home thrives on energy and dancing we both lack in skill. You try to dance with your long limbs, swaying to each side. There’s no doubt that you’ve won the hearts of more than one that night, there were more eyes than mine you could have made eye contact with, but yours were locked on mine. It was a night, yet to the classroom setting the night continues. Our eyes meet more  times than one, and I hope to meet them, it isn’t a chore… “keep your eyes on your own paper.”

“I want to get to know you better.”

Yet our lives are places in such an arrangement to never proceed any further than this slow beginning. A curse has been placed upon us to never break past it, but my patience is running thin. I don’t know how to proceed; I am not good with spoken words as I am with writing them. You speak of my “Intelligence”, my “talent”, my “beauty”… but all I am missing is the air to proceed any further.

“I really did enjoy getting to know you this year.”

What I wanted to say in response was, “I spent all year trying to get to know you… and I am still trying, and wanting to get to know you – all of you.” At the beginning of this year, I did not want to speak any words, yet here we are speaking words that we have never spoken, half grounded, ready to fly from this place, going our separate ways. We still have yet to surpass gentle waves of hello, and talks about the weather, but there are, I guess, different types of beginnings. There are beginnings that are fast, and some beginnings are slow. Some beginnings I could get used to happening over and over again.

“I hope we will see each other again.”

–                       Emilyn Nguyen, Different Types of Beginnings

 

 

Catching Light

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

Resting by the open grass field behind our house, her hands are rested on the tips of the grass blades, running her hand through them, much like our mother brushed our hair; gently with finesse, plaiting our locks into a tightly woven braid, pulling the strands I was twirling at my fingertips, and securing them away with the last of loose ends. When my sister starts speak, I am caught by surprise, there is a beauty in her that I have never noticed before. Her voice is familiar but her tone is held captive by solitude at the back of her throat. She points to our neighbor’s stalks of sunflowers faced away from us. “Did you know that sunflowers grow towards the sun? They’re beautiful. Aren’t they?” I don’t respond. I only smile at her, and continue to gaze into the empty air.

The sun’s rays are direct today; there are little clouds, and no haze except the glare from the sunlight hitting my glasses I notice the streaks from the light, wondering if my sister notices them too. She doesn’t wear glasses. Her eyes are too delicate, and beautiful to have anything cover them. She possessed recessive traits, much like our mother, but she has my father’s nose. No wonder she has a quirk for smelling problems, bugging into trouble. They always did, but it’s evident that she has the braveness of my father despite her delicate eyes, and tendencies. She is beautiful – so beautiful. I smile as I watch her immerse herself into the setting.

The sunlight that shines on her does well; does her justice; does mother justice; does father justice. I smile at the thought of mother standing and hovering over us. I imagine her hair getting caught in the wind, and the sunlight catching on her, exposing the roots of her dark hair as a light brown, her eyes become speckled with green, and yellow. In the light, her beauty persists – endlessly – I see her in my sister.

I thought light travels too fast to be caught, but how lovely it would be to have it in a jar – along with a sunflower, my mother’s gold rings, and my sister’s favorite trinkets. It would be beautiful – cherished. When I tell her about this jar, she grins, and tells me that I should leave some of my lemon cookies in it too. “They’re so sweet!” She says. I laugh, “…and yellow! My favorite color!” she adds.

“I know. Mine too,” I think to myself. They’re as sweet as you – just as bright as you, “… like the sun!” she interrupts. Yes, you are the sun. I smile, brushing the grass at my fingertips, looking at my sister in awe of her gentleness, kindness, and beauty. The sun hits her drowning her a little, and I see my mother. “What are you looking at?” She asks.

“Nothing,” I respond. She shrugs, and begins dancing, spinning, twirling in the grass, singing songs, I cannot understand, with carelessness. She clasps her hands like she’s trying to catch the light, dancing with nothing but the beat of her heart. Her laugh contagiously latches on me as we end up rolling in the grass in laughter. Looking towards the sky, she faces the sun, and her eyes are squinted because of her smile. It’s so big, and wide, her happiness makes my stomach flutter. I am happy for her.

Resting by the open grass field behind our house, my arms are reached toward the sky, my fingers trying to pinch the sun, with one eye closed; catching the light for her, when she already had. “Remember when we used to hide here, spinning in our dresses until our hearts gave out, and the light left us, only to return the next dy. Now we’ve decided our ambitions, spinning our minds – never stopping – until we’re wrapped in light,” I say. Lying on the grass alone, looking up at the sun, seeing her. I am happy for her.

–          Emilyn Nguyen, Catching Light

 

 

Dear New York, I Am Looking For Something in Millions

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

“New York is made up of millions of different people, and they all come here looking for something” ― Lindsey Kelk, I Heart New York

When I slept last night, I dreamt through a thousand unknown years. Every year, I was looking through someone’s perspective. I felt their hands sweat to the pressure of the men in black suits; their feet move to the audition music of Broadway; their hearts beat faster when they confessed their love; their eyes become brighter to the city lights – their dreams becoming what they had only seen in their sleep. In a thousand unknown years from black and white to the serenity of color, tranquility fell into my heavy life, and pulled me from the darkness where I fallen from, and into the daylight in which even amidst my dreams – seemed to have whispered my ambitions and aspirations to a city that belonged to millions before me, leaving me to search for a single speck of hope in the city. I felt hopeless until when my soul departed the muted black and white history of home, I remember that I became a flock of pigeons to be with it. Five second of its atmosphere’s presence on my skin, I was taken and embraced by it – this, made me think that these ambitions and aspirations of mine will be forever at my palms. To think, once in time, I saw this city for its gray and blue. I took it for its heat, but these cool evening take me back in time. “Do you remember,” I think, “the nights I’ve stayed up, even in the bad times, thinking there is a glass half full though only of sinking hopes, waiting to be revived.” I might have figured this out as these city lights are keeping me up, and I cannot possibly wait to fall asleep to another thousand unknown years belonging to those looking for something in a single city. Perhaps when I awake, I must be the next perspective in this first night in the big city.

–   Emilyn Nguyen, Dear New York, I Am Looking For Something in Millions (Dear New York Series)

Dear New York, I Am Hopeful for You

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

“London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.” ― Dorothy Parker

There is a sight in my mind, of strangers brushing my shoulder, and a view taking the breaths that leave my lips. It guides my eyes through the cracks of cement statues, gray air, and a transition of memories – all of those who pass by from the sweeping spectators to those who commenced our reunion. Statues stop many of us in our tracks to admire their silenced symbolism. They speak as if to whisper, “Hello”.

I reckon it’s a tangible abyss we are in. This is art, one attempting to foreshadow what comes. To it: it’s a chance to live outside of what is expected – a new frame of mind. They even tell me that, “it was what should have come much sooner.”

There are paintings concealed by glass, and there are statues concealed by people, all concealed by an aura of such energy. People surround them freely, even at the sight of expired ideas, and dreams, a new melody and harmony is redeemed.  It lands on my tongue and tastes of a muse of discovery.

I imagine stone statures that seem to breathe and move along with the people it captures amongst its personas. I thought I felt one tap my shoulder. Backs are turned away to meet bright faces. They are too, begging for a grand entrance, they say “nothing can hold them down,” but their feet are bounded, and so instead people discover them. Some grab their cold hands to dance with them. Their feet barley move at all, but the energy is swirling around seventy hundred feet sky scrapers, collected in April rain puddles, and gracefully gliding down the streets. Time is in short supply but they live timelessly in movements granted by those who own the chisel.

Within them there are people of melody, and there are people of harmony. There are drafts of pure greetings, and fossilized farewells. I see them all, and yet it is welcoming me with new written sonatas, with freshly molded tempos. I hope to dance to them.

My friends are tugging at my arms for they have gathered our belongings and I have already begun collecting dust. They tell me that the stones have already started moving; the air has been blaring in tunes; the light has already started to glimmer; they say, “good is about to come off, and we must hurry to meet it,” – Soon.

–         Emilyn Nguyen, Dear New York, I’m Hopeful For You (Dear New York Series)

The Good

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

I want to imagine falling fast because you’ve pushed me off a bridge but before I go, kiss me quickly while making it last so I can determine how much it will hurt when you say goodbye. To determine if it was too soon or too late because I had understood that you were the one that didn’t feel the same. Yet, I understand that people come and people go but I don’t ever want to say goodbye to you. I question why you couldn’t let the future pass and simply let go. I only ever so slightly want to say goodnight to you. I only hope that the good in our good nights will mean I will see you in my dreams and goodbyes will mean that we will always end up meeting again tomorrow. I want to see you, even if it means for a slight minute like the moon meets the sun just before daylight forty five minutes after five and after the late eight o’clock orange-crimson sunset. You were convinced that there was no good in goodbye; no good in goodnight, but at first hand it may appear too hard, but look again. Always look again. I promise there’s good in that.

–         Emilyn Nguyen, The Good

The Mistakes

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

When we make mistakes, do we really learn from them?

Especially when we know that our mistakes lie in the witness of others, and our minds ruin the fact that our mistakes will never go forgotten — will never be forgiven. You tell yourself that you were just a child, you couldn’t possibly know. Yet, your mind circles around the fact that your mistake will linger in the air forever and you cannot improve because you cannot take it back.

 It’s already been done: a mistake it was exhibited for show.

So when I ask, do we really learn from our mistakes, I respond, “no”.

I live in them, I swim in them, and they remind me how I must do better. They tell me how I’ve done wrong, and how much I’ve to improve: I’ve to improve everything. I try harder to improve my craft, but God Damn, the mind of an over-thinker will emphasize that “No, whatever you do, you’ve wronged the first time — and that’s the only time that matters.”

Back Up.

No.

Mistakes build character, and even though your head is wrapped up, tangled in, reliving in, and retracing the fact that you’ve made a mistake, it tells me so much that you’re trying. Even though you have a small voice, and your body seems like wither at the sight of a crowd, your mistake is done — it’s over, and if you believe that you are defined by it, than what you don’t know is: you are not. You are shaped by it. Because of it, you will thrive in all your endeavors. I promise you that you will not make the same mistake more than three times, because you’ve put so much thought into it, and the part of you that cares too much will remember that you are determined enough to remember not to. If you do: the first time is to warn you; the second time is to persuade you; and the third time is to … see. I told you.

So if I ask the question again, do we learn from our mistakes, I say,

Perhaps our mistakes must learn from us.

Do they know how much we emphasize them over the good, no matter how little it might have been. More than they know, we know the most that we’ve made them, and we have replayed them over in our heads, seeing people shake their head at us until our minds are dry in our mistakes. What we know is that we know that mistakes build character beside its negative connotation. Not making mistakes is inevitable. It doesn’t make you a failure.

The next time you make a mistake, a question echoes: When we make mistakes, do we really learn from them? Especially when we know that our mistakes lie in the witness of others, and our minds ruin the fact that our mistakes will never go forgotten — will never be forgiven. In the moment that your mind is hovering in uneasy murmurs or doubts, and questions, they have already been:

Forgotten – 

Have Already Been Forgiven.

 –             Emilyn Nguyen, The Mistakes

3:45

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

From midnight on, I couldn’t help staring at the light ignited from the phone; waiting anxiously for a message I, for some reason, knew I wouldn’t receive. The night is longer than day, so cruel of overthinking possibility being held in the air. To add, the moon couldn’t keep away, its light kept shining; temping me to call, like the loose thread on my sheets I couldn’t resist to pull – I didn’t. I couldn’t wait till day, so the moon could meet the sun, and the stars could lie in the clouds. The coldness of the night’s snow shown sheets embraced the moon, cradled me into the clean white blankets, but I wanted the embrace of the burning sun as it would rage. Rage for me, rage at the moon.  By 1 o’clock, the sheets became my comfort embedding itself into the heat I radiate, waiting impatiently. Imagining the warmth of my blankets as the radiating heat of your body against mine. By 2 o’clock, I went unnoticed, the sky lightening, my crippling exhaustion leaving me numb. My eyelids heavy at the hallucinations I was witnessing. You became a vision, and like the moon you were fading, fading – gone. My fascination towards phone lights dimmed towards to growing moon – bigger and smaller like the strength of my heart. At 2:45, I became taunted to close my eyes completely. Through withdrawal, I only crash, slipping slowly under my sheets completely. I only fear that I will suffocate myself; deprive myself of air before 3. From the moon to the stars, counted the stars and the constellations like I counted the minutes I waited. The 45 after 2, taunted me, the titanic sinking deeper in my heart. Second per second, minute per minute waiting until 3. By 3:45, I only saw how your eyes lit up when you saw me in the night’s moonlight, trying to count the stars between our giggles in our dreams…

–         Emilyn Nguyen, 3:45 A.M

Roses

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose
Her grandmother told her that her delicate, intricate, beveling beauty closely resembled one of a rose. On lovely, tender spring mornings, she had soft, rosy pink cheeks complimenting her pink lips, and below lengthy, stem – like legs. Her soft skin radiated with a wonderful floral scent and even when it rained, her freckles seemed to dance across her face like raindrops mirroring the dainty dew droplets that lie upon her white – pink petals. Her whole lively being was recognized to draw in others – to love and to be loved – but without knowing: to capture the victims in her hidden, disastrous thorns. Her heart lived outside her chest, hours away at your window garden, roses were her grandmother favorite. When vines reach up through my head again, and the roots sew themselves to my toes, to be consumed by their splendor again and then realizing she is gone, and there is nothing growing inside you. If winters weren’t so cold, I’ll water from the roots to the vines to become the rose beside the garden inside of her that her grandmother once spoke of.
–         Emilyn Nguyen, Roses

Meghana

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

In the reflection of the sunrise,
a cloud disrupts the clear sky with one single tear,
and I can see the joy in the eyes of those who held you first:

White, and pure into their hands, before it evaporates. Notice how she smiles, molding into the palms of your hands, but she may stay or leave you, no matter what she’ll leave you a mark of goodness, reminding you that it exists. It might be an unparticular date, January 27th, but the clouds still form. There might be rain, maybe snow today, perhaps hail, but this cloud stands alone, brushing dust off the back of her hand to start waving, whispering her wishes in a bashful hush. “Something ought to come out of those clouds, something out to come of me.”  Twisting through the white-blue sky, a background of blue snow, her words are a reason to become winded. She becomes all of the elements of the sky that one holds between their fingers while their head is tilted back and up blinded by the brightness of the sky. You don’t even know. Within you, you’ve shared stories, and painted in breezes. Illusions unfold, and rewind together within you sometimes you escape once again though… you always return to watch over me once again. Sometimes, you will not say a word, but in visuals you write in strength, smiles and hope – aspiring to inspire. You grow in shapes and sizes, aside the bright sun, and you’re a cloud. You can become everything and anything here or even beyond the white-blue skies.

It feels like a cotton breeze,
as I watch the sun rise, and you appear.
“Meghana,” they call you.

–               Emilyn Nguyen, Meghana

Bittersweet

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

I am bitter.

I am not sweet.

I am not even a taste of in between. I am not bittersweet with a glimpse of both lemon taffies, and my grandmother’s lemonade. I am so very bitter.

I admit I will never stop appreciating the beauty of – yellow custard lemon tarts, for its ability to be sour, and at the same time: tasteful. You see, I am very good at using useless metaphors, weak symbolism, and analogies that speak like chimes to the people of the gray.

I over analyze life, but I am very bad at telling people how I feel – so he interrupts me, and says that I am sweet, never bitter, “and if you don’t believe me, you’ll believe me when I tell you that your voice is my favorite sound, no matter what words you use – from your analogies, weak symbolism, and useless metaphors. I must be the people of the gray.”

You don’t understand why I don’t discuss my first love with you. I repeat that it is because I am very bad at telling people how I feel, but especially because he is too sweet, and this might mean that I am in love with him still. I am very bitter at even the idea love.

I will admit though, that I am starting to believe in him. His eyes are too soft for me to handle – too sweet, and I don’t think you understand my fear when you look at me with those eyes and tell me that you think that I am sweet, that inside…

“I love you.”

I am not sweet. I am bitter. I am not even a taste of in between. I have repeated, and don’t you dare repeat those words, because I don’t believe in love. I don’t know what love is. I am no one to love. I am not bittersweet with a glimpse between my mother’s key lime pie, and my father’s burnt lemon tarts. I am bitter. You don’t understand why I don’t discuss my first love with you. He is too sweet, and I am too afraid to admit that I am vulnerable – so I am bitter as a hypocrite confessing my feelings to the people of the gray.

They tell me that I shouldn’t invite them into my life if they are inconsistently in love, but love is anything but inconsistent. For since the second I have met I fell in love with his sweet eyes.

You couldn’t possibly understand why I don’t discuss my first love with you and it is because he is sweet, and I can’t fight the bitter sweetness to be vulnerable to admit for the first time – to any one:

“I love you too.”

–            Emilyn Nguyen, Bittersweet