“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)