Every time I eat a pomegranate it is like a tiny little genocide. My white computer is covered in blood spatters, the only remnants of what was once alive and good in the world. Well, I guess that the raggedy shell remains but no one is going to look at that and see what was once the small little paradise of ruby gems. That is, paradise until the killings happened. All because they were different. Not even that different, but just different enough to inspire such hatred.

I should clean my computer, wipe away the only evidence of what has transpired so no one will ever have to be faced with the ugly truth of what we're capable of doing out of ignorance. But I won't. Until it becomes too much and I break down and admit to it like the rest of them. I'm the same, we're all the same. It's ugly and disgusting. We're ugly and disgusting.

Today is the twenty-third of December, my grandpa's birthday. And the day my grandma died. And the day my grandma's sister died. It feels like so much more than just a day to me. How beautiful, in a sad way. My grandma wasn't even that old- she had a form of disease that was similar to mad cow disease or ALS. Something in her brain. The doctors never quite figured out what it was, but she just. wasted. away. It killed her. She was just in pain, constantly, for years. I can remember hearing her crying when I was little, her small bony frame in the brown recliner chair she couldn't move from. She always looked out the window and she always cried. It was that uncomfortable inhuman feeling where can hear it but you don't know what to do. I was young, I don't even know, and I didn't know if I should look or not. It seemed like I shouldn't, like I should pretend everything was fine. I don't even remember my grandma healthy. 

We wouldn't visit too often because of the whole living in a different country thing, but I remember the last time we did. Saying goodbye to my grandma, by now bedridden, knowing in that strange childlike realization sort of way that this would be the last time I'd probably ever see her alive-- I just want to remember her happy and healthy. I don't want to think of the dark sitting room, the recliner, the window. I don't want to hear it, to see it, to smell it (medciney and uriney, like a doctor but in my grandpa's home), to feel that uncomfortable unease. But I do. 

She finally died, then. This day, years ago. The day before Christmas, my grandpa's birthday. I remember that day. I remember my mom's tears. I hate my mom's tears, they hurt almost like my grandma's. I was young, but when we went to her funeral (that christmas wasn't really like it) I knew grandma wasn't crying anymore.

I wasn't sad when I put the small scoop of dirt over her casket in the ground. Because I know my grandma wasn't in there, she wasn't. She didn't have to look out that window anymore. She was out of her body that had failed her before her mind did. She didn't have to hurt anymore.

One night when I was back home, lying in bed at night, trying to fall asleep I heard my bedroom door open. I looked over, and it was cracked open. I wasn't sure if I'd just left it open or if it had just opened but I convinced myself I'd left it that way, squeezed my eyes shut and buried my face in the pillow, not wanting to think about what could be out and about in the nighttime. I felt someone sit on the edge of my bed, the small displacement of weight and creak of protest. I was afraid, then I felt a hand in my hair, stroking slowly. In a sudden burst of idon'tknowwhat I opened my eyes and looked-- nothing. The weight was gone, and so was the hand.

I'm going to stop now.