30 March, 2020: Kimberly Nguyễn

New York, USA

dispatch from quarantine
3/30/2020 - new york city

it is day 7 of quarantine/ and 7 months since my friends gaslit me/ and i can’t pretend the instagram stories don’t make me a little sad/ the zoom calls, i am not invited to/ the inside jokes i no longer know/ i cannot pretend the way they are so happy/ without me/ do not make the four walls of my room/ that much more empty/ grief changed me in a way/ i can only count/ by the number of days that pass between the mornings i wake up/ and do not remember how to go on/ yet i still do/ i thought earnestly that the grief would kill me/ and it didn’t/ the longer i stay here, the more empty my room feels/ but maybe this room is growing/ to make space/ for all the new things i can fill it with//


Kimberly Nguyễn is a Vietnamese-American poet originally from Omaha, Nebraska and currently trying to become a New Yorker. She has recently published a book of poetry, ghosts in the stalks, that explores the intersections of language, colonialism, intergenerational trauma, and diasporic experience.
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