Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [865]

“I want to marry you,” I said. I hesitated, and there was absolute silence. I couldn’t believe I’d heard myself say such a thing, but it was true. … Maybe I was just feeling bereft. Keith, my father, the Garfields, Mrs. Quintanilla… People could disappear so easily. I wanted someone with me who cared about me, and who wouldn’t disappear. But my judgment wasn’t entirely gone. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 865

Note

The narration turns the narrator’s own proposal into something she overhears rather than decides — ‘I couldn’t believe I’d heard myself say such a thing’ splits speaker from self. The list of the dead by bare name, then the ellipsis, then the flat sentence ‘People could disappear so easily,’ gives grief its arithmetic. The hedged closing ‘But my judgment wasn’t entirely gone’ is a nice bit of self-suspicion that refuses to let the romantic beat stand clean.