Days pass in a timely fashion:
Slowly by daytime intervals, fast in a scale of seasons.

Moments happening without hurry,
quickly turning into memories –
with the quick approach of a future.

The world spins tilted,
in sections of dry lands, wet clouds, white blankets, misty fog.

Our minds are open, and our hearts are given.

Full view of and in full view:
sealed memories,
bottled ocean water,
brilliant minds,
endless miracles –
in a year of given time.

There are summers missed,
in a Secret Garden hidden under one tree:
barefoot dancing in our summer dresses,
talking of big dreams with bright eyes,
feeling like moments were timeless,
and nothing could change.

Yet leaves fall,
slanted, never straight;
unless, “it’s the way you look at it.”

A view of covered backs,
packed with essentials:
pencils, pens, paper,
dried flowers, devious secrets,
strengths, weaknesses –
of yours and mine.

to hibernate
and dream,
of a season
left behind.

To what we know best:
there is time,
a countdown,
an event,
a time,

to wait for,
to tell us:
when to return back – and start again.

- Emilyn Nguyen

“Bless her Heart,” he says,
to a product of display
but to her dismay:

Silhouette behind
numbers and comments – many
of which carry her.

“Who,” – should cherish her,
could take care of her
would love her: profile.

He saw her display,
with another hundred men,
behind glass windows.

Seeing an outline,
shape with no response throughout,
still, completely still.

“Hello,” she said
tight-lipped as a hushed shadow
in the faint doorway.

Lily, you grow delicately like the dreams in your undefiled mind,
internally defiant of your ambition to the people; kind, and graceful;
Loving all; Ivies and cattails envy you when you bloom lonely on single:
Lilypads, refusing to accept anything that you deserve. You must realize,
in time you deserve to be called by something so beautiful, and stop,
answering to everything but your full –
Name.

“My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.”
– Virginia Woolf, Selected Letters

Reading Virginia,
as if I understand her morals.
“Do not,” She has written.

Analyzing Woolf,
“One cannot think well,” she says.
my tongue is dry of new air, to “…love well…”

“…sleep well…” – Nightmares mostly,
leftover sleep and a dew of overdue promises
evaporating off my lips,  purging with blood.

She ended, “…if one has not dined well.”
I began: “Do Not Speak to me about Hunger;
Speak to me about War.”

Here I stay: barefooted in between
airport tile floors –  they tell me,
Gritting my teeth to the dreams,
forbidden desire and will to shining silver linings.

The cruelty, unrivaled, taking parts of a dream,
leaving most to die, but she’s hungry,
they told her the war’s over, but she won’t heel,
filling a God-sized with infused useless poetry madness.

- Emilyn Nguyen

Circles within circles clenched in a fist,
finger prints of mothers, fathers, of fathers oncle, ma grand-mère et grand-père,
Vietnamese blurred French – English dialect – adopted.
Held captive by four corners – owned by simplicities of mind, lesson well learned.
Combination of two sides, cinching an aged tradition,
Recycling words, welcoming of solitude in circumference chasms.

Plated orange-yellow poles upon, crimson grading pens upon, pink erasers upon,
yellow painted light wooden pencil between the webs of my fingers,
foreign and forced upon my uncoordinated hand,
ached and cramped knotted upon them, strung upon my tangled fingers – alien.
Blind to possibility, possible to the blind,
your warm hand guiding mine, gliding streaks of graphite-lead onto smooth bamboo paper.

Inked loose leaf paper upon sheets of bent thoughts meant to be traced upon.
Handwriting of the foreign, different from the raced,
language to be taught, words to be learned,
syllables chopped, from tongue to lips, to be refused by air,
my lips followed yours, by a semblance in matter,
your dashes guide me, synchronizing to your hand before smooth, a poem you wrote.

Sawed cut chopsticks to count upon mixed upon erasers, grips upon,
wrinkled skin between clenched newborn fists,
opened wide, exposing the wings they possessed between each finger,
creases created to count with father’s hitchhiker’s thumb,
until one realized that there was more to count,
with the spaces between mother’s joints on her wide hands, and long fingers.

Canisters of undeveloped films, reminders that one has not rendered,
Fluent spheres develop in your mind, death-sentence tolled,
A color and composition – segments of hued breaths you took between shutters unraveling that you belong—intertwining my foreign fingers in your hair.
Words you’ve forgotten, shriveled hands cracked,
I wrote the words you could no longer teach me: to have met.

-         Emilyn Nguyen

It took a long while for you to find me
through our treasure trove.
Look for me, and an acquisition it was,
my heart treaded to your tarantella.

Through the white desert sandy blankets and the spilled seas,
you came to search for me.
Closets, Hidden Hatches, Attics,
I told you to find me, come protect me.

Despite the tedious counting, you told me you were coming.
I questioned if you had surrendered to your fear of fear,
so you could win one battle against these chromosomes.
I thought I’d be lost forever, that you’d be lost forever.

Marco to the Polo,
crimson tie-dye on your childish shirt,
Colors wanting to collide, to bond but only,
Stuck between two intersecting ways of a chromatography-inked maze.

I yelled, “Over here!” to help you,
only to confuse you with the echoes drumming in your ears.
I was paralyzed in time, tick to the tock, dusk to dawn.
Waiting – hinting you by ruckuses, pots and pans,
making it easier for you, from my love for you.

Only until you reached my hiding spot,
your face became blank, striking with fear in your soft cheeks,
I had realized you weren’t looking for me, in a childish game:
You were looking for a hiding spot of your own.

-         Emilyn Nguyen

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