Highway with Green Apples

by Bae Suah

It was black, I know it was.

And I keep my mouth shut.

covered half of her face. The piano music playing at full volume inside the car echoes far down

The air is filled with the scent of the invisible sea.

A cousin isn’t something solid. Neither is family.

What happened to the docile, slightly sexy, five-foot-four shopgirl he thought he’d met?

Don’t be like your mother when you grow up.”

a clean smell like ice just pulled from the freezer.

Instead, I said, “I’m lonely, and it hurts.” I told him, “I wanted so badly to be smothered with love that I thought I would go crazy.”

The high school sophomore who thought he’d go crazy from lack of sex and the six-year-old girl who’d suffered from a terminal lack of affection walked hand in hand out of the hotel.

If anyone were to wake up at that moment and glance out their window to see the two of us walking down the street, they wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep and would have to have a smoke.

“What’s he like?” I ask. “He’s a snob.” “A bourgeois pig?” “Exactly. A perfect specimen.”