It wasn't much more than a whistlestop on the permafrost, sketched out in gray lines, ironed into angular shrines for people to inhabit, or cohabit—well, not that, not yet. He had unpacked alone and left a sandwich on the heater. Motherless, motherless, motherless, it was raining: clouds colliding with clouds without excuse, silly raindrops with coarse earth, men with women hurrying to work—what were they thinking, they weren't going to be together, anyway? He was there for a meeting; it had to be. It was the sort of place where sunlight went poking about for more things to do, where the carriage clocks advanced because it was the only thing they could do; it was something. He was there, and he unpacked an apple from a satchel on his bed, to shine it to a precocious luster on his arm, to eat it, to sizzle about a waxy motel suite with juice on his chin, plodding circularly in ever-increasing speed: because God made an apple, because God is an apple, because there is an apple to be eaten, an apple right here, to eat, so eat it, because, because, she entered, she said, because© Seth Abramson
from Alaska Quarterly Review