Highway with Green Apples

by Bae Suah

“If you like painting that much, shouldn’t you be a painter instead of working in a department store? If you don’t want to live an ordinary life, then why are you dating a good-for-nothing like me, instead of finishing college and meeting someone in the same league as you?”

To the final darkness of summer before the oncoming dawn, I whisper: “I don’t know anything.” I’m not thrilled by sex, and I’m not moved by love. I gaze down at the road stretching off into the distance and stand still in the bleak, dusty wind. I think I can smell the green of the river and the scent of old grass. “Is the ocean this way?” they pull over and ask. The wind ruffles my hair and flattens the tall, dry grass along the side of the road. Rachmaninov blares out the car windows, and they buy green apples.