Warm light reflects off of her horror movie posters and vines hanging above her bed creating an eerie glow from her fairy light, shining a cast of amber orange onto the beauty reading in the shadows of it all.

A sister, a daughter, and a friend. A gentle soul above all.

Agua Fria senior Simone Chery is a lover of reading and writing. Her scene is a bright and bubbly personality.

Poetic; one of my favorite words that I would use to describe Simone. She has a certain way of looking at things and seeing the simple beauty. She has such a calming aura. She truly is the brightest thing when she is around.

She is so invested with her own poetry. One day in class, she looked up as her English teacher Ms. Johnson said, “Elegies are a pretty simple concept. Have you ever wanted to write a poem about a dead person? Well now all of your dreams are about to come true.”

As though it is the most ineserenting thing in the world, she let herself become engulfed within the poem Ms. Johnson showed as an example: 

“Fragile like a child is fragile.

Destined not to be forever.

Destined to become other

To mother. Here I am

Sitting on a chair, thinking

About you. Thinking

About how it was

To talk to you.”

Just by looking at Simone you can see the hard work, the kindness, the care. She gives off this energy that is just too hard to ignore. Her creative side is such a sight to see. 

“While I have a lot of hobbies, my main two are reading and writing,” Simone said. “They’re really therapeutic so I find myself doing them a lot. But they also kind of introduced me to in an entirely new and fictional world, and that’s why I do them a lot. I read every day and I write occasionally when I have been inspired to do so.”

Simone is so much more than what she does at school, although she is very talented and intelligent. Her favorite quote is from author C.S. Lewis: “Experience: the most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”

“I feel like I relate to it the most, I have a lot of favorite quotes, but this one kinda of hits close to home,” Simone said. 

She added, “Girllll, I’ve been through a lot of [stuff] and…it is just so true. I’ve been through a lot of harsh experiences. I would describe it as life basically throwing me into this carver to shape me into some disturbingly beautiful me. I feel like experiences are just something that carves people, it creates them and helps them learn.” 

Middle child, high school senior, born and raised in Arizona — these are all the basic things you may already know about her, or something you would know about anybody you’ve ever talked to. Simone got scholarships from NAU, ASU, and GCU, which is so amazing. She is a god at yahtzee, according to her and her mom. 

What speaks about her most, though, is her writing. She can tell so many different stories at once, and give so many different thoughts and emotions at once.

Here’s a sample of her work:

“Horror”

Villanelle: I remember. 

And so he carved my heart from my breast

    He left me to my lonesome and my reflection echoed with unfamiliarity

    My heart mourned and writhed in his palm

Our eyes met yet he gazed at a ghost

    Had he forgotten the devotion and intimacy we share? I needed clarity.

    And so he carved my heart from my breast

He’d left me when I so truly needed him the most

    His muttered ‘love yous’ and hand on my heart were a rarity

    My heart mourned and writhed in his palm

I should have known from his hard expression and lack of affection for upon me that he had dosed

    He never loved me and what he truly loved was sinister in severity

    And so he carved my heart from my breast

I remember now! There were whispers but harsh in sound as he huffed at my riposte

    He had unsheathed his hidden dagger, chiseling around my heart as our souls unbalanced on the scales in disparity 

    My heart mourned and writhed in his palm

With the same knife, onto the bark of the tree my name he wrote

    I remember now… my love took my soul and the muscle in my ribcage into his hold of insincerity

    And so he carved my heart from my breast

    My heart mourned and writhed in his palm”

In the entirety of it all, the girl was basically bathing in the sadness she had within her. She feels like she is not herself without him, and she could never be herself. She is heartbroken, she is mourning the loss of him, she is feeling left and alone. She is going through this short but constant cycle of pain, loneliness, and confusion. In the end he killed her, but throughout the whole thing, it made it seem as though he only broke her heart, but he literally cut her heart out.

This reminds me of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. Just like Poe, Simone reminds me of the greats and she will be one.

“I’ve never even taught Simone, but I have heard so many great things about her, and how she is a phenomenal person,” said Ms. Fowler, an English teacher here at Agua Fria.

Simone will continue to affect everyone around her with her amazing personality.