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Diana Khoi Nguyen, Age 6

Diana Khoi Nguyen’s poems appear in Poetry, American Poetry Review, PEN America, and The Iowa Review. This story was written in 1991.

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The Bear and the Seeds 1
The Bear and the Seeds 2
The Bear and the Seeds 3
The Bear and the Seeds 4
The Bear and the Seeds 5

— Diana Khoi Nguyen, Age 6

Diana Khoi Nguyen

“I lived right across the street from my elementary school (my parents still do), in the house that my parents built on weekends (they worked full-time jobs during the week). I was in kindergarten, and we had learned to make our own kites using rice paper and wooden skewers. This was the first kite I ever flew—and it didn’t fly very well, but I kept trying out on the soccer field, long after school had ended. It was windy, I remember that, and the strings on my kite got very tangled. I spent the rest of the afternoon slowly, persistently untangling all the string—going well into the evening. To this day, I can untangle any lines—necklaces, thread, yarn…”