Kim Zupan

“He went slowly along a long gray corridor, the redoubtable masonry of clammy stone on either side stacked and mortared against the penetration of hope. The familiar smell of disinfectant and floor wax was in his nostrils, the walls lined with scarred wooden benches with high backs that may have been pews rescued from a desanctified church. In passing he read names carved into the seats circumscribed with hearts or conjoined with chains and there were admonitions in crude calligraphy to fuck off, to eat shit. In one high seat back an optimistic vandal had inscribed his assurance that Millimaki would be reborn. The work of feral children, of wives and lovers mutely enraged by their celibacy, their infidelities. Mothers had dug their nails into the soft wood as they waited in the dank corridor to see the fruit of their wombs turned out so briefly from their cages.”
― Kim Zupan, The Ploughmen: A Novel