Words by: Nicole Huynh
Art by: Nicole Huynh

To the prewritten, paved laneways of societally scripted ‘shoulds’. Exploring unmapped alleyways that call to me brings my heart so much more stability than quote on quote success ever could.

Respectfully disrespectful, 

Nicole

Saved 

Checkpoint: Further down under

In Sydney, I wouldn’t have felt the soul-warming hearth of two best friends. They breathed hardy love and laughter into my childhood days.

Checkpoint: Mute mother tongue

Less spritely steps into the unknown means a life where the wind didn’t travel beside my grandpa and me. Freshly 13, on a bridge with my eyes closed, on the back of his motorcycle. It would’ve meant one less person in the family ward, overlooking pristine toys ribboned in blue. It would’ve meant not knowing the sensation of awakening to the tiny, happy hands of a baby cousin I loved on sight.

Checkpoint: First love

I came back, only to be set back. Without Cambodia, I wouldn’t have stumbled through VCE, turning to meet the stranger who called my name — a stranger who stood beside the native seed of a land unplotted. I picked up the undiscovered seed I had yet to water, which rolled innocently in my palm, determining it to be from the species Sexuality.

Checkpoint: Childhood friends to lovers, to strangers

Saying no to what wasn’t right led me to what was. This relationship realised my deeper values in being loved. To be loved is to be known, to know safety itself, and not to have to think. Its separation expanded my capacity for patience and discernment for the future characters I choose to love. It offered me an opportunity to experience both the momentously sweet and bitter tastes of the same treat. I savoured it all. Had we continued down this path, marriage would now be in my five-year plan. But I also never would have met her. 

Checkpoint: The big blue U

An empty course preference list. Maybe I’ll choose paramedicine. Maybe I never get to meet the folks who colour my university experience with streaks of orange and navy. My fingers dip and glide, painting shapes atop in gold.

Checkpoint: Renaissance 

I meet her. Through tears as she takes in the beauty of flight and the grounds of a motherland beneath. A beaming smile at an airport. A tongue speaking in notes heard six years ago. Foundations I’ve stood on for two decades, running along sacred grounds as my heart sings an ancient hymn. Two bare feet taking in a city rooted in my heart, made possible only through sowing a seed that took six years to bear fruit. Absolutely nothing is the same. After years of blackened, filled lungs, mine deshell and expand in full, for the first time in my childhood.

Manifesto

I’ve run, skipped and meandered my way through the scenic routes of my life. Cackling, crying, content. 

Every wade into grief enlarged the map of my heart, until the next love I filled it with contained more than the last. 

I own the land of my body and my heart. 

I breathe life into her with every choice that I make. Every hut that I mould, every bridge that I forge, every forest that I regenerate — all speckled with my fingerprints. 

Her game of life is mine to play, to love, and to breathe in.