harvest

I've discovered a way to make crops grow out of broken promises, shattered hopes, and disappointment. It started, like most discoveries, on accident, but it didn't take me long to figure out how to capitalize on it.

Every week I take my produce to the farmer's market, and everyone comments on how beautiful everything is, and they ask what my secret is. I make a dismissive joke and they laugh and purchase something and take it home and enjoy nature's bounty and never once think about it. I'm making a modest living off it, but it's not as easy as you'd think. If everyone took advantage of the disappointment so integral to human existence no one would ever starve, but until I started this, I was pretty content.

So I had to go out and make people disappoint me. It wasn't hard, of course--the ease with which I could find people to let me down could fuel an entire season's harvest--but in order for it to work the disappointment has to be real. After a while it takes its toll. People, often the same people who have helped me with the harvest, ask me why I look so sad all the time. I smile and say it's nothing, because what else can I do? I need to let them let me down if I want to stay in business.