Head Like a Hole

by Andrew Van Wey

Maybe that’s what immortality is: remembering the tastes of your youth while feeding your children.

People want to be heard, especially when they’ve been misheard, misquoted, and misunderstood. It’s why we relive old arguments in the shower until we’ve won.

She was starting to understand the truth of it all: most friends didn’t grow older and closer. They simply grew apart.

That’s the power of memory, he supposes. Every one is unique, carved into neurons and strengthened through emotions and senses. It’s why so many adults never move past the music of their youth.

I like to think we’re the sum total of all those who helped us or hurt us or simply shared our life for a moment.

“The deepest bonds are elemental, built upon the friction of opposition. Water and fire, night and day, life and death. The transition from adolescence to adulthood lives at this nexus. It’s why you remember the chapped lips of your first kiss and the songs of the summer. Why true awe is your first trip to Fenway Park, with your friends. And why nothing ever tastes as delicious as that hotdog they bought you.”

“Do you know what it’s like to have nothing? To be reduced to the barest scrap of existence? To eat desperation? Of course not. You and your friends, you whine about hardships, but you’ve never tasted misery. You’re a tourist to suffering.”