by Frenci Nguyen

i map my soul in grains of sand: the nights we huddled up in tents
on an empty stretch of the island, the crunch of our teeth against
the crisp of fried chicken saltier than the oceanwater lathering our skin
and bullying the shoreline, the choral contest of ravenous seagulls
versus our disharmonious rendering of elton john’s “tiny dancer”
versus the crackle of dried seaweed beneath our palm-tree sandals.
but your soul itself is the moon up high, and when i remember
the way it glows atop the undulating waves, i wish instead
that i could be the tide.

Frenci Nguyen holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Miami University (Oxford, OH) where they taught freshman composition as well as introductory creative writing and worked at the Howe Writing Center as a graduate writing consultant. A runner-up for the 2021 Betty James Abrahams Poetry Prize and winner of the 2020 Jordan-Goodman Graduate Writing Award in Creative Nonfiction, Frenci has essays published in Bat City Review, Hippocampus, peculiar, and Emerald City.