Tag: Narrative

Seven Billion

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

Last night, deep in conversation, you told me that “seven billion people experienced this day in a different way.” They’re seven billion days of separate people; of countless moments and timeless memories, simultaneously happening throughout a single day’s time. I would think that perhaps these seven billion days would make one feel so insignificant, small, and uncertain, yet my eyes only widen with hope. I know that the greetings of hello are the highlight of the seven billion days – this I know for certain, you are living proof. Though it seems hundreds of days have passed since I have stumbled talking to you, it feels like the first day. Words flow fluidly between us, and it feeds my bright eyes. They grow to your responses. Without your words, I search to find them again; wanting to carve them into my memory. Long nights they have been, but you drift into my heart, and I’ve learned to accept you again. Both the flow of your heat and the brilliance of your mind feed into my mundane irises. I want to cherish you like I the poems I’ve heard from your lips; protect them unlike my forgotten memories. You make me feel like I must live up to it, and I respond, “There must be seven billion ways I can live my life.”

–           Emilyn Nguyen, Seven Billion

 

Pigeons

Posted on by Emilyn in Poetry

(Sometimes) Lovers are strangers – recipients of commerce.

Lend me a pen for swooping calligraphy.
Give me a time,
a place at the Willow Tree
blooming orchids of fate but,

(You) Mourn bliss, sacrificed for Oblivion.

No sense,
no Holy Halos –
Hopes to be forward but short –

hopelessly distant,

Birds (have to) bless you
beneath the sun’s radiance –
fly to you, to wish to embrace you.

Carrying penned words of:
ardent thanks,
sincere sympathy,
greetings …

then sealed.

Free (fall) freedom feelings:
blushed cheeks,
scarlet smiles,
faint porcelain skin,

(Before) falling head on in love with words,
setting skies, and singing birds –

I fell over my heels with reminiscing of home.

Free (flying) as the high atmosphere –
unslept hours staring at the depth of his breath,

To stare to an endless dream.

(Let go) Exhale a petal,
pick a petal,
my dear mockingbird.

Love me or Love me not –

pick a petal,

drop a petal…

Thoughts (so) breathlessly taken,
here or there,
timed and placed.

(You) Send me part two,
(can) will fly from heaven,

and back to me.

When birds (fly) amongst the sky to you and (back),
Only to settle where it may: (to me)

penned –home.

–               Emilyn Nguyen, Pigeons

 

 

Twenty-Fourteen

Posted on by Emilyn in Life

Hellos are met at the front door with sincere waves and smiles. Notice the curvatures of their lips – their off-white teeth and cracked lips shining like moonlight towards an opening of one’s heart and letting someone in. The creak of the porch served as a stoic warning, but I entered. My awkward posture, fidgeting hands, and a discrete smile, I entered with such caution, and propriety; still feeling the uneasy step in to a white abyss: a new year. A blank space it was. In the depths of my persona, I was a pair of bright eyes, very little of a voice, and an overfilled brown leather journal. On the twenty-fourth page of it, I wrote:

 “Twenty-Fourteen is about an evolution; a change in time with an entirely different meaning; an emerging voice; another side of fear; laughing endlessly; loving ceaselessly; running regularly; remembering the smallest moments; reading hundreds; writing even more; an exploration somewhere near, and somewhere far; an adventure; learning something new, and something old; freely living – infinitely, and fearlessly.”

Now, I think:

Changing. Perhaps.

Evolving. Entirely.

I finally found my voice, and it was no longer in the symbolism of neither my poetry, prose, nor strokes of my brushes, but the sound waves when I spoke. I didn’t believe my mother when she told me that “you’d grow into your voice. It’s okay to be shy,” but eventually I did. My anxiety when speaking eventually evaporated and my voice did emerge along with an obnoxious laugh, the way my mother says my father tilts his head back and squeals in silent laughter, and a contagious chuckle. I evolved. I was no longer just entering the front doors with sincere waves, and smiles, but I was letting people enter with a darling hello. I became observant of the smallest of memories in book characters, and new found friends. I was the greeter at the door by the end of Twenty-Fourteen.

I let people freely enter my life. I welcomed them. I met people that loved me, changed me, cared for me, but also love, and cherish in return. I met people for days a time, only a week, to grow as sisters – still growing, still evolving. I met people that laughed and loved me for one bad joke and an obscure giggle. I met people that understand me, and that don’t; people that were distinctively at the opposite end of the pole of where I was, but those were where the adventures were best. For once, I was content with not being able to understand content with having neither an explanation nor reason for all that I do in my lifetime. I can love science while loving religion as an old blanket; I can be creative while being innovative…

 

“With a mind like yours, stay true to what you believe…”

I was blessed with adventures, small and large with these people. Explorations with them, I found pieces of myself in each place I found myself wandering in, the good and the bad: my plan to start anew. I was met face to face with my fears and my failures, and this alone was a blessing. Through my books, my long strolls, running reminiscing in the rain, spinning in summer dresses, getting lost in old libraries, biking in the woods, I was no longer afraid to let go, be wild, be free, and be misunderstood. Twenty-Fourteen loved me, made me, broke me, and changed me.  Until now, I realize that I’m surrounded by such energy in this life, of both love and such fearlessness, I am no longer afraid to wander alone into a welcoming white abyss: this New Year.

 –            Emilyn Nguyen, Twenty-Fourteen

 Currently Listening To: Your Song By Elton John

 

Collection of Memories of Twenty-Fourteen:
(Opening My Memory Jar)

  • Beyond the Microscope: (January) Medical Center Science Research Symposium – With Claire, Matthew, and Allison
  • Love in 14 Ways: (Valentine’s Day, February) Carnation Giving at Hospital – With Claire, Juliana, Meghana, and Allison
  • Discovering Water Colors: (March) Rediscovering Water Color Paints! How Beautiful!
  • First Large Canvas Painting: (April) C’est Paris! Painting of Paris Completed!
  • Honored: (May) National Honor Society Initiation Ceremony
  • First Fears: (May) First Science Research Presentation – With Matthew, Allison, Claire, and Science Research Class
  • All Dolled Up: (June) Junior Prom – With Allison, Claire, Juliana (and Meghana in spirit)
  • Claire Bear: (July) Claire’s Birthday Surprise! – With Meghana, and Allison
  • Motivational Friends = Motivation is Contagious: (July) CURIE Academy at Cornell University – With CURIE Girls Internationally
  • Carolina Shores: (July) Outerbanks – with Lily, and Family
  • Hurricane Arthur: (July) Maryland for Sanctuary – With Ethan, Emma, Lily, Danny, Timothy, and Family
  • Land of the Free: (July) Little Ethan finds comfort in my arms for the Fourth of July Fireworks in Maryland – With Lily, Emma, Ethan, Danny Timothy, and Family
  • Seventeen in Ithaca: (July) Birthday Insomnia Cookies, Breakfast, Presentation, Lunch & Dinner – With CURIE Girls, Lily, Timothy, and Family
  • Broken Humerus, Not Humorous (July): Timothy’s Surgery
  • Running in Place: (August) Rochester Scholars Session B: Biomedical technology: Engineer, Doctor, or Both?
  • I’m Listening: (August) Rochester2014 Session B: Cochlea: Microphone of the Inner Ear
  • “I Can’t Pose!”: (September) Senior Photos – With Michelle
  • More Bitter than Sweet: (September) Last Year of High School
  • Trojans, Trojans what’s Your Cry? V-I-C-T-O-R-Y: (October) Spirit Week/ Homecoming! – With Friends
  • Last Season: (October) Meghana’s Last Tennis Match of her High School Career: She won! – With Juliana, and Bethany
  • At Hallows: (October) Cat for Taekwondo Halloween Party, Zombies for Halloween Trick-Or-Treating – With Lily, Danny, and Timothy
  • Before Thanksgiving: (November) College, College, College [Applications]
  • Thankful Thanks: (November) Thanksgiving at Lynn’s House – With Lynn, Michelle, Lily, and Family
  • Midnight Rumble: (November) Black Friday – With Lily & Mom
  • With the People of the Era, Where I Belong: Senior to Senior Intergenerational Dance – With Kat, Meghana, Claire &
  • Elephant Santa: (December) Gag Gifts Secret Santa – With Friends
  • Baby, It’s Cold Outside:(December) Holiday Party – with Allison, Claire, Meghana, and Juliana

IMG_7070

 

The Present & Future

Posted on by Emilyn in Poetry

There is no future without the present day.

There is no present without an idea of the future.

Perhaps this is where our problems begin.

I wish I could be able to live more in the present,
but my head is always dreaming about a future.
I forget that I have to get there first.

I don’t have a future yet –
it has yet to only exist in my dreams.
So I lay my head down walking on clouds, as a dreamer.

I do not know what will happen –
Nothing is for certain, but for the sake of shame,
I admit it is the only thing that I have control over.

Now – Day by Day for and to a Future Anew.

I’ll admit that I carry a fear of the future,
its aura of mysterious vines and suspenseful drapes.
In my dreams , I am able to a push them aside,

Now – Dreaming of the Present,
What I must do for a New Future.

Finally, something we can agree on.

–         Emilyn Nguyen, The Present & Future

La Laconde (The Mona Lisa)

Posted on by Emilyn in Poetry

La Joconde1

Now that you’ve seen her face,
the skin between his fingers tingled of the emptiness of a brush:
That smile illuminated the world around her –
her patented smirk, softly carved out;
her delicate features,
her piercing stare spreading,
contemplating.

There are many counting countenances of those who try to replicate her – I.
the skin between my eyebrows, in wonder, in utter introspection,
Those eyes confused the audience around her:
For there is a woman with confidence in beauty.

Exceeding all manifested bounds.

From 1503,
From a canvas taut with lack of a woman’s color,
scraped the muter shades with a blade’s edge,
Layering her textures – alive.

Seeing and
Painting myself over the top.

Her paths are painted inset – layered beneath the certainty and knowledge of her years.
All of this useless chaos swirling in about these empty distractions, and feeble
pretense –
as you stare back at her, the roads seems clear.

Her scintillations glow a bit more gold than white,
in front of a locale of open fields, feared of windblown hair.
She is the center of the color blocked mountains.

Her perspective is in my self-possession.

Her lightly dust on her powdered skin
shading in soft contours in vibrant hues of blues
and,  reds and,  yellows and,  greens as forests grow.
Blending dusky shades and blurring shadows
to highlight regal undertones.

The names became opulent
a match for your alias,
She was Bernadette, Carol, David, Leo, Meryl – Myself.

Finished in 1517 to –
She is seen through the glass of geometric pyramids,
I am standing behind a crowd until I am the only one left standing,
And I have become her eyes, and her contagious smile.

I know what she in the canvas  is saying:
“I know what the wind tastes like,
and I am scared no longer.”
To be a woman,

to be a confident woman – with  ambition , dedication and pride…
To have the eyes and a smile illuminating the world around her,

 To be La Laconde.

–         Emilyn Nguyen, La Laconde

1: La Joconde: The Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci (French)