Tag: Prose Poetry

In Remembrance

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

Long walks into the evening setting sun comfort me as the tides creep further and further up the shore grazing my feet as I stand there, washing up sea shells and taking up them back as they go, sinking my feet into the sand as if Neptune mourned my presence with the sea. I’m standing here, thinking of you, while the salty atmosphere winds blows through my hair, and whispers of your voice remind me of how much you loved the sea. As the sea creeps ashore to kiss my toes oh so gently, the scent of salty ocean air is soothing as you breathe against my neck, but the ache of missing you still lingers still in my skin as I reminisce. My bones are captivated by the fresh air they never get to feel. My porcelain skin fades into the white sand, into its embrace wishing it was yours. I start to lose my balance, gravity pulling me but I stay standing so I can see the sun setting in the distance. The soft oranges, rose pinks and yellows remind me that endings can be beautiful, no matter how much I miss the sun would stay just a little while longer. As the sky begins to fade to a somber shade of blue, I close my eyes and allow my mind to focus the white noise of crashing waves, praying that when I open them, the sun will have risen, and you will be standing here beside me because I had the sea on my arm in your remembrance, so your beloved tides could bring you back to me in a bottle washed upon shore. When the sun rises again with its oranges, yellows, crimson, and purple horizons, I will know you will have returned to my memory.

–         Emilyn Nguyen, In Remembrance

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

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

 

 

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

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

Birthday Wishes

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

From the first to the last day, I want to write a story about the memories I’ve experienced and the words I’ve exchanged. Sentences to chapters I’ve written, avoiding the sun, because it was something we could never control. As the earth moves, and the sun – so stationary stays – daylight soon moves to sunset, quickly to night, and the moonlight blinds me, and all I know is the time is drying out. I write and write as the sun rays glide across my paper, sometimes blinding me, and my story never is complete – never feels complete. I sit on a hill; a forty five angle away from the sun, for it isn’t like a candle I can relight, but my candles are blown out, the night sky finally fades and I wish to be a year younger, never to let go the memories, for words were never enough.

– Emilyn Nguyen, Birthday Wishes

My Father’s Shadow

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

My shadow holds me against my bones, reminding me that I am a whole, walking to the place on paper, speaking in dark shadows of words. Be the whole, be the half, be the fraction of a fourth that becomes missing. If this slicked hair becomes hazy in the shadow, my shadow is lying. I am the mess, covered by a shadow – my shadow, or yours. I hope my shadow is the handshake with my father. I hope he’s back to stay, beside me, dancing shadow in shadow until the rose fades to black as night time dawns, taking my father away from me again. Shadow, come back with my father. Be back with his shadow, because I am not whole without his touch, I am lost. Be the handshake with my father for just one night. The roses clutched tightly in my palm, forgetting the thorns for just one night. When the light returns I hope he’s there, but you’ve left me with a white rose, and his shadow behind me, watching me love at my own pace.

–         Emilyn Nguyen, My Father’s Shadow