Cherry

by Nico Walker

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.

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.

You’ll have friends. Usually it’s nothing.

I was getting pretty dull already from exhaustion, but then again I was on edge all the time because I was waiting for the war to happen to me.

Such was life. I didn’t understand it.

Tomorrow it would only cost another $90 to get us out of bed.

I was uncomfortable in comfortable places.

There were oceans inside of me.

When you have been afraid for a long time, you see how fear will come and go. How fear will overtake you. How fear will subside. How fear guts you for a moment. How hope puts you back together, till the fear comes back. Then the hope. Then the fear.