there were two of them left, red and pink and tan, nestled in a bed of bubble wrap and cardboard. at first, i didn't eat them because i had already eaten three. i broke them open carefully, juice feathering in the lines of my palms. and then, i didn't eat them because i couldn't, because they reminded me too much of home, this cardboard box on the bottom shelf of my bookcase, with those two pomegranates like dumb red eggs unhatched. and so i carried them to the backyard, to the garbage bin and its gaping mouth ready to gobble up scraps of paper and fruit flies and pomegranates alike. i didn't think of opening them each fall with my father, the tap of a knife against the edge of a metal sink and the soft ghostly bodies of rotten seeds floating in a bowl of water. i didn't think of my mother, and how she'd packed them so carefully, so that they wouldn't crack and bleed before they reached me. i didn't think of anything at all. i went to bed at three in the afternoon, and woke up feeling like someone had cut me open and emptied me out, like two rocks at the bottom of a ditch.
