Member-only story

Nuts and Cherries

Coco Densmore
2 min readOct 15, 2022

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Photo by Quaritsch Photography on Unsplash

January 23, 2021

I slept for an hour. Or maybe I didn’t sleep. Before I laid down, I read a love letter I had written to Jeff. It struck me with such a familiar pain. I woke crying. I tried not to sob, so as not to wake my niece in the next room. Finally, I surrendered to the sad and came downstairs.

I’m eating toast and drinking tea. Cinnamon toast. When I was upstairs crying, I thought it might make me feel better. Now that I’m eating, I’ve stopped crying. Now I’m writing.

Today is the anniversary of the day I lost my virginity. I remember, every year. I always remember. I was eighteen; 39 years ago. I used to go to a bar and drink a Pink Squirrel to commemorate. I looked it up. Crème de noyaux, made with apricot and cherry pits, bitter almonds and botanicals, cherry pink from the cochineal, an insect used for dye. Nuts and cherries. I was always alone as I drank, tears welling over memories of a magical time. Tears and smiles.

It’s not him I think of so much, it’s me. Already there were indications of the pain ahead. The sorrow with no basis. I do remember those years as my best years. Still, they were full of the feeling I never felt right anywhere. I felt I was watching other people live, while I watched myself watch others.

Maybe the sad came from knowing it wouldn’t last. So brief, so tender, that time…

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Coco Densmore
Coco Densmore

Written by Coco Densmore

Coco Densmore writes about Embracing Her Single, being HSV-2+, living with bipolar mental illness, and overcoming childhood sexual abuse. www.cocodensmore.com.

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