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When I was a child I understood
         Adam and Eve’s fall quite
                   literally, saw them floating
                             together in silence through a pure
                                       blue sky, their hair fluttering
                                                 away from their faces, limbs tumbling
                   through
 
         and through
                             and through
 
the air. I did not think of the thud
their bodies would have made,
the ground shaking, their bruised
and shattered bones –
 
         just endless
 
                   descent
 
         like the kind of snow
                   that comes down all day
                                        until the pale of the sky         blurs
                                                                                         into the horizon.
 
When my cousin fell
from an apple tree and died
on New Year’s Day
when we were both ten
years old,                              I refused
 
to believe in death,
         spent the day of his funeral
                    watching the snowflakes
 
                   falling
 
                             and falling,
 
         shrouding the windfall fruit
 
like grace.

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