As when a long forgetfulness lifts suddenly, and what we'd forgotten—as we look at it squarely, then again refuse to look—is our own inconsequence, yes, it was mostly like that, sex as both an act of defacement and— as if the two were the same thing—votive offering, insofar as the leaves also were a kind of offering, or could at least be said to be, as they kept falling the way leaves do: volitionless, from different heights, and in the one direction.
From Speak Low by Carl Phillips. Copyright © 2009 by Carl Phillips. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, www.fsgbooks.com. All rights reserved.