Tag: Prose

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

 

 

From Arm’s Reach

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

What do you do when your dreams are further than what feels like you can reach, but it is the only thing that feeds your heart and mind with adrenaline tingling throughout your body to the tips of your fingers and toes to only stretch further than you possibly could believe before? What do you do when your dreams are so full of uncertainty that you can’t help but ponder upon it every second of every day? How do you make the time pass faster to see where you would end up?  How do you slow down the process to make sure that you haven’t missed a step, or a moment to record this journey on paper with pen? Give me a moment to breathe, and ground myself in my roots; to inhale the air of determination, and exhale the stress that it beholds. I’ve found my voice and ambitions on the other side of places, those I am unsure of and unable to talk about until I get there. All I hear about, even now, are comments of uncertainty, and the shouts of markers that I have missed. All the thoughts that surround me are those of what people is unknown, and there is no faith from people but myself. They told me to walk away, but I know that I can push from millions miles further than they believe I can. An arm’s reach is only a step, but day by day, it’s an arm’s reach that will get me there. Reaching for heights that I will grasp one day, but for now, from arm’s reach.

–                Emilyn Nguyen, From Arm’s Reach

 

Blank Canvases: New Beginings

Posted on by Emilyn in Life, My Journal (My Life), Photography, Prose

In a bundle of blankets wrapped around my legs, my toes still wander among them. They curl in a cold numbness, but move slowly outside of the sheets, only crawling back for sanctuary when it had decided to wander too far, sending a glimpse of the winter air invading the warmth I feel.

In retrospect, there are several candles burning simultaneously. Scents intermixing and seemingly to interchange with each other – “Vanilla Bean  Noel”, “Leaves”, “Vanilla Frosted Cupcakes”, and “Apple Orchids”.  The beginning of the wax melting and the ends of the wicks burning into the glass Mason jar, their aura of entitled seasons and settings – colliding with memories gathering at the frontal cortex of my mind, telling me to “remember…”

I remember faintly, but waking up to a New Year, my eyelids are heavy amongst morning light, but I can still feel the ache of my body against the hardwood floor beneath me. There is a mess of my books scrambled amongst the polished hardwood floor. Paint brushes and pens are spread apart messily from each other next to opened paint palettes, and untouched new sketch books – all lying still as if I were painting still life; a beautiful mess.

My journals are opened up to my favorite entries, for I was frantically flipping through them for inspiration; in a frantic search for a new idea. I have a fear to become a closed, quiet, and reserved mind, but against the wall, a blank canvas is still at the head of the mess is white and waiting patiently for a painting anew.

I think I must have fallen asleep staring at the canvas. There is still a paintbrush in my hand, wet with moisture. I reached for my brown journal the simplicity in the page catches my eye. It says, “If you want to know where your heart is, look to where your mind goes when it wanders.”

Useless.

I must admit I have been an empty mind, searching for what my mother calls a “lost cause.” Empty canvases are bad luck.

I can taste the candle burning now, overpowering in the memories they have connected to this room – this home. I drag my blankets off my legs walking to the window, and the snow is too bright for my eyes. A new sheet of ice has appeared on my window, but the white sheet of blankness and stillness appeals to me, leading me to start wandering.

I am falling into a white abyss.

There are indications of where I am, but I am inclined to find the root of its origin. There are parts that remind me of my childhood like a flashback of photos – quickly, so you feel like so much time has passed. What you don’t see is all the time that is coming.

You don’t know how much time is coming, but think far. Think far ahead. Dream far ahead, and only look back when reflecting, to better improve yourself. Wander. Wander far ahead with your dreams tucked behind your ears.

I recall memories of comfort and dread and in between them now is where I lie. It is something that I am sure of; something I am connected to. It is a tangible feeling that I feel. One minute you imagine that you’re eight, and others an age of sixteen.

To realize, I quiver in a dream walking as a paintbrush on a white-as-snow canvas, letting myself fall heavily into a white abyss. New snow falls for a new year; this lost cause is a new beginning.

–

I’ve picked up the paintbrush and begun to paint.

Photography By: Michelle Dee

Currently Listening To: Move Together By James Bay

–           Emilyn Nguyen, Blank Canvases: New Beginnings

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)

Draw My Breath

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

I have been trying for days after days, hours after hours, minutes after minutes, seconds after millisecond to figure out a way to describe that echoing in my chest as my heart cries out for you. It beats fast, then slow, only to be fast again because my mind relapses with images you, and the connecting breath from my lungs begin to lack air as you leave me breathless. With every full thump that drags in every breath that catches in my throat when I realize how intensely you lack a need for me. I only hoped your bones were captivated by fresh air they never get to feel; is that why they peek through your skin stretched taut as if they’re trying to putt through your nerve endings or is the air chilling your epidermis making goose bumps arise? Why do your hips and ribs jut out like they crave the atmosphere’s breath? The very act of breathing reminds you that you’re not whole – not without me, cried the heart; cried the skin’s drying touch; cried the eyes; cried the muscles aching. Save her, save me, for my heart won’t live without her breath. Yet the tattoo on her chest, her heart’s fighting beat contradicts the hope the lungs held: Do not resuscitate.

–         Emilyn Nguyen, Draw My Breath

To Be Sorry

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

 “Don’t come back here! I have a bomb,” he said with no hesitation in his voice.

With an undertone of laughter, he pointed at me with pure determination to frighten me away. As laughter arose from the depth of the leather bus seats and the black aisle, he was joined by the other kids in roars of squeals and giggles. I walked down the bus aisle to find an open seat, praying it would be the next. As he pointed, I took a few steps back. Hold your head high. Hold your tears back. I heard my father’s voice in the back of my head. Hold your chin up, look him right in the eye.  I remembered my grandfather said in his story of a war he once lived through. His wrinkles on a corner of his eye as he pounded his fist against the table to get a strong point across. There was no fear in his eyes, his body figure was tall and strong as I looked up at him. I’ve been through this before. Pre-school, when I came home with red blotches on my skin – bruises forming from an abusive friend. She was ‘just kidding’.

 As I made me way to the back of the bus to find a seat, he began to chant louder into my ears. “Don’t come back here! I have a bomb! Don’t come back here! I have a bomb! Don’t come back here! I have a bomb!” he repeatedly shouted. A silent storm started to erupt. Snowflake turned into hail as its rage, but I forced the tears behind my eyelids till it ached; till my heart began to pound harder and my skin began to react to the heated yellow bus.

Slowly but cautiously my feet started to move, as if courage was something I was taught; as if my heart could tread any faster or as a myocardial infarction could erupt. My feet were weights, dragged on by life, as it must go on. My dry slanted eyes of my ethnicity forced tears back until my eyes were a desert that never sought water. My hands climbing back to the back while eye were captured on me, my hands trembling towards every seat. A treacherous journey, day by retched day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by slowing second. My head was constantly on a move to find a seat. I repeat: a seat.

 My eye caught onto a girl crying. I remember her face. Her long dirty blonde locks down her back. I remember her. “Sixteen and pregnant”. I remember her name from the whispers down the hallway. To believe them was enforced by the cliques of popularity. She was a savage sent off from the clique: let go. A used tool of a popularity game. True or not, she was human, and beautiful. Her beauty was a bright, glowing face, blonde hair down her slim figure against the others in her group of friends. Her face in the hallways, as she stopped me. My face covered in acne, from the late nights stress and heredity’s genes. My eyes in complete shock to what exploded out of her mouth, “There might be some acne cream to fix your face, but it won’t fix you.”

As if the rumors were worth a death of innocent girl. Rumors hold a fate, as if words meant more than truth. Jealousy raging and fighting an innocent girl who gave me the same fate. I looked at her, and her eyes were placed on mine, and I opened my mouth and said, “I’m sorry”, as if there was no past between us. I smiled at her, and her tears started to ease. Her stained face of mascara started to dry upon her face. She smiled and started to laugh among the other on the bus.

Quick remarks, and kind hearts could only go in such way. Maybe we met at the wrong time, and that’s what I’ll tell myself for now. Maybe one day, years from now, we’ll meet again, and we could give a friendship another shot. For now laughs from afar seemed too close, and hallucination-like views were too real to be forgiven. Chanting kids like screaming angry chimpanzees on Animal Planet.

If finding a seat was this difficult, maybe walking a few miles home seemed to be easier. I turned away and started to walk towards the exit of the bus, the bus driver giving me an ugly stare, “Where are you going?” he asked. The bus monitor’s stubborn eyes glared at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. ‘Sorry’ seemed to be the only thing I could say. I repeated, “I’m sorry”. Sorry, a word of apology, a word for expressing pity.

“Nothing to be sorry for, but please take a seat,” he said.

 I nodded. “Sorry.”

Again, a seat on a full bus of kids was rare. Two in a seat. “Can I sit with you?” I asked a girl. Her brown hair was put up in a messy bun, her soccer cleats on her lap.

“No. This might be too close to the back for you. I don’t want to be hurt by the bomb too.” She replied.

I nodded. Again: “Sorry.”

I reached the back of the bus, closer to the boys who acted as terrorists. As if my eyes defined who I was – it did, but as if it defined who I was in the inside. Stereotypes are too mainstream.

 Closer I came to the back of the bud, kids were joined in by other kids on the back of the bus, one screamed, “Do come back, maybe It’ll straighten out your eyes!” Laughs started to erupt, exploding from a volcano. Sparks falling from the sky, first piercing my skin, then burning it, killing me. I sat next to that boy…the bus monitor asked him to move over so I could take a seat. His eyes were watering. I wasn’t sure if he wasn’t taking his bad day out on me or if it was from the laughter. As if it was funny from the beginning.

 To this day, these words still ring throughout my ears, and it’s still packed in the back of my mind. I still remember the people who were on that bus, their faces and how they still give me dirty glares as I pass down the hallways. Maybe a few years from now, in a café shop, we’ll get along, and maybe we could give it another shot, starting with a hello.

 I looked at him with his spiky hair in class today, and he helped me pick up my stuff when I dropped it. While picking papers up, our hands collided and our head bumped, and I didn’t realize it was him, but he has the same eyes: blue and bright. I forgave him for everything…”Sorry.”

–         Emilyn Nguyen, To Be Sorry

Doors

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

I always had an admiration for doors as you did. The doors were the springs in simplicity that kept me grounded all these years – never to leave the house after six and before six without telling him. You tried throwing away the trinkets she left behind, but still, you loved her like you loved the front door she made aside you. Left open, you exchanged the screen doors for glass because one day, you believed that she would be staring through it again, clear through glass rather than distorted. You didn’t want to admit you loved the light but hated the evening winds – you believed they blew her away. The doors reminded you of hope as they do in uncertainty but in your reprimanding depth, I said they were reminders of hope to create the frames of uncertainty; shall I leave it open or closed, summer sun or in springs rain, glass or screen. No one can discover what lies behind their hinges with a quick glance. If she will return with her eyes of apology or in hope of shelter. Yet, I still loved doors. For every one held its own adventure, its own journey, its own story – fate of love or hate – but see, you began to hate doors. Your mind as hysterical as mine when you began to forget my name. You decided you would rather close them – the doors. You always liked to tear things down instead of build them up. You made me replace the glass with the screen, so you could feel the winds. Now that you’re relapsing into Alzheimer’s superiority, you’ve forgotten about mom, no longer waiting for her to return at the door. Yet, I waited for you to return. When I trusted you to open my doors and you slammed it right in my face, but I knew it wasn’t you, Dad, your conscience slowly deteriorating. You crushed my insecurities in the small cracks I let hope try to shine through. The door we made together, sanded together began to rust into dust. You splintered my heart on the wooded frames I gave to you to protect. I painted you with the brightest, loveliest colors of yellow, invested in every brush stroke I made because even when you wanted it closed, I knew somewhere you wanted the light again. You hated doors and I hate that I trusted you enough to open mine, so I did, and once you saw mom, I had knew that in my uncertainty, you had found hope – only leaving me to mine.

 –         Emilyn Nguyen, Doors