The pomegranates

Mistakes were made, their name was midtown. Midtown on a Thursday night when the massive tree was already present and bedecked. Midtown between two skating rinks in full swing on a semi-mild night.

You walk with your hands in front of you like you are doing the breaststroke.

You walk on the edge of the sidewalk behind the hot dog and pretzel vendors. Carts sizzling. Slush and juices under foot but you don't care, you're wearing your new ankle rain boots. Yellow, courageous, lucky.

On the other side of the slow-moving river of people, women and children sit on the sidewalk, their backs pressed against the walls of buildings. The crowd presses against the signs these women are holding. Small signs, like the chauffeurs at the arrivals terminal at the airport, but asking for money.

You have a missed call and a voicemail from a school reporting that a child was moving a desk and fell and hurt his elbow. A wrong number. You do not have a child. You did slip though, and catch yourself spectacularly. Some police with counterterrorism dogs saw it happen, but did not remark upon it, while all around you people stopped in their tracks. "We made it!" and "What a beautiful tree!"

On the train home, a woman is talking on the phone, about how she'd split an omelette with her mother. How she'd already ordered the omelette, when her mother said: "What's an omelette again?" And the woman was stymied. "I mean, how do you describe an omelette?"

That train arrives uneventfully.

The following evening on the same line, one train hits another. You're not on that train, you're at a party.

The next morning, you wake to find a toy mouse with its tail severed, and the phrase, "separation of church and state" comes to mind, and stays there all day. You add the mouse to a basket of cat toys that need mending.

The pomegranates on the counter also wait for your hands.

News

"Search Work: A Collective Inquiry into the Job Hunt" (OR Books, 2026) is now available for pre-order at 15% off, exclusively from OR Books. I believe you can also pre-order at your favorite indie bookstore.

Thank you, Rachel Meade Smith, for including my essay in this visionary and timeless collection! It's my first essay in a book, I am over the moon. And thank you, OR Books, for giving this book a home.