Cherry

by Nico Walker

But we’re happy enough, though we’re often sad because we feel like we’re losing everything.

I say joke because in my case I don’t imagine there was ever one to believe I’d do anything serious if push came to shove, though I do make it a point to try and at least look a little deranged because I don’t want anyone getting in trouble on account of me. I have a lot of sadness in the face to make up for, so I have to make faces like I’m crazy or else people will think I’m a pussy.

Sometimes I wonder if youth wasn’t wasted on me. It’s not that I’m dumb to the beauty of things. I take all the beautiful things to heart, and they fuck my heart till I about die from it. So it isn’t that. It’s just that something in me’s always drawn me away, and it’s the singular part of me, and I can’t explain it.

So maybe I get away. And here come the sirens. Here come their fucking gangsters. The sirens screaming now, now turning. And I feel peaceful.

This is how you find the one to break your heart.

THERE ARE countless women in the world. At times it’s more than I can bear to think about: that there should be so many and they all start out the way they do, with all the brightness and their own invisible worlds and secret languages and what else they have, and that we ruin everything.

But it was a matter of fate, or something to that effect, what would bring us together, regardless if I ever deserved her. And if my life got fucked it wasn’t her fault. I should say that now.

She was always saying how she thought love didn’t really exist, how it was just pheromones playing tricks on people

“What’ll you do if it rains?” “Drown, I guess.”

But she wasn’t the hill I was meant to die on.

Can you look back to when you met the one you loved the most and remember exactly how it was? Not as in where you were or what she was wearing or what you ate for lunch that day, but rather as in what it was you saw in her that made you say, Yes, this is what I came here for.

I said I didn’t want to live because I’d already seen everything that was going to happen and it was a nightmare.

She was above me, concentrating. I could tell she was concentrating because her jaw would go a little sideways when she concentrated like that. Which was absolutely the most beautiful thing in the world.