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6.21.2026 7:00 AM

Dispatches from the Emotional Trenches: A Guide to Being a Cancer by Iryna Somkina

Dispatches from the Emotional Trenches: A Guide to Being a Cancer

Forget the daily horoscopes. A special Gorko correspondent (and a Cancer by birth) delivers the ultimate, unfiltered reality check on why living in an armored shell is simultaneously a fucking nightmare and an absolute flex.

a short list of why it’s fucking shit to be a cancer:

being called ‘sensitive’ by people who have the emotional depth of a dry kitchen sponge.
your ‘protective shell’ just meaning you’re an armored ball of pure, unfiltered anxiety.
absorbing the mood of a room so intensely that you walk into a store for milk and leave with the personality of an angry truck driver named Bob.
constantly feeling used but being too emotionally codependent to just pack your bags and leave.
the uncontrollable urge to nurture everyone, including the toxic dumpster fires who thrive on your tears.
the physical inability to throw away a moldy lemon from the fridge because “we’ve been through so much together this week.”
putting heavy weights on gym equipment just to feel some gravity because your emotions keep launching you into outer space.

a short list of why it’s fucking awesome to be a cancer:

having a memory so terrifyingly perfect that you can resurrect an inside joke from 2009 with forensic precision, just to make a person laugh right in the middle of their mental breakdown.
having a bullshit detector that works so ruthlessly accurately that you can physically smell a person’s rotten nature from three time zones away.
possessing the terrifying, god-like ability to know exactly what to say within the first few seconds to emotionally destroy an enemy, but choosing an arrogant and aggressive ignore instead.
having a psychopathic, uncontrollable urge to feed all your people into a happy food coma and never, under any circumstances, skimping on the absolute best food for those you love.
loving your friends with the unhinged, feral intensity of a mama bear who just took six shots of espresso.
experiencing music, art, and life itself on an emotional frequency of 4K ultra-HD, while everyone else is watching it on a chunky TV from 1998.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Iryna Somkina is a Kyiv-based writer. She is Best Small Fiction nominee; her works appear in Gone Lawn, ANMLY, Heavy Feather Review and everywhere else. She explores ambivalence of intimacy in gritty reality.