Cherry and her family

- by Sergey Salyuk, age 15

My name is Cherry.

I want to have a beautiful house and a lot of bread and cooked meat,
a nice garden, planted with vegetables and fruits.

I have a nice husband and a little dark child and a very poor house.

I have a fear of war and not enough food and my child having diseases.

I fish with my husband with nets to have something to eat at home.
It's hard to fish and pull the net out of the water with a lot of fish.

My name is Cherry and I love my husband.


[Editor's note: After reading poetry, fiction and non-fiction representing various groups who lived in or came to Oregon in the 1700s and 1800s, youth were asked to write a poem from the perspective of someone new or established in the region during that time. This is one of the poems.]