Dry Harvest

Contributor: Sean Crose

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In truth you prefer the dry harvest to its more colorful counterpart. Who wants to work with water outdoors in November? Besides, the dry harvest allows you to mostly work alone. It's just you, nature, the gas-powered picker, and the cranberries.
Naturally such solitary manual labor causes one's mind to wander. You tend to think of two things as you work your way across the rows of hard earth: the past and your ambitions.
In a distinct way you see them both as being connected, since you never actually fulfilled the promises you made to yourself back in the day. You wonder what some of your peers would say if they saw you now, toiling in soiled jeans at six-thirty in the morning.
Would they be embarrassed or would they simply turn to one another with “I told you so” looks? Of course you'd tell them that you love the work and are still planning on attending law school. Yet, being almost forty, that bold proclamation doesn't carry that much weight. You wonder if you even have the ambition to attend night classes anymore.
And so you continue on with your dry harvest, toiling under the awareness that others are thriving. On some mornings you find yourself wondering if your endless youth has finally morphed into belated adulthood. You've yet to come up with an answer to that question. You know only that all dry harvests come to an end.


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My work has appeared in such publications as FICTION 365, CRACK THE SPINE, THE COPPERFIELD REVIEW and, of course, LINGUISTIC EROSION. I live in Connecticut with my wife, Jen, and Cody, the world's greatest cat.
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