Peeling a Pomegranate in the Winter

Today, after a long series of strange, restful dreams, I opened myself a pomegranate.

I nicked the sides, peeled them, and put them into the cold water. I picked out the seeds, and noticed that some of the off-white sections were brown.

“Well, I’ll just cut those sections out,” I told myself.

In the next section, there was a little more rot. The seeds were soft and grainy, pale and ghost-like.

I got to the end of the second half, and I thought, “Darn. I guess I’ll just have to stick to the first half.”

It’s near Solstice, right? Maybe it has something to do with winter.

I looked at the first half and sorted some seeds from that side. I could see some obvious soft seeds from the beginning of those slices,  too. I picked them out, remembering that I had seen a few when I began peeling.

I guess I’ll just have to have fewer pomegranate seeds today, I told myself.

I looked at the pile, winced a bit, and thought, “I think it’ll be okay…” I thought about the illness I had just recovered from, an illness that had affected both my breath and my stomach. I thought about the fact that I had woken up with enough sleep for the first time in a long time. It was a new day, and I was going to go into the new year a phoenix, fit with energy for the next decade.

And then I said, “No.”

You don’t have to eat the fruit if it’s rotted.

I chucked it out. Not without a little bit of regret, but I thought, “No.”

Snow White fell for that one, too.

We’ll have a banana today, I decided.