Diction

It was easy to hear the word that turned through the table. It could sound like death, or listen! or ridicule, but it caught at the throat and stuck. The other words, those at the spiked green corners of her eye or the bittersweet planes of his mouth, were pregnant with it, its sons and daughters. They'd labor on, these people, without fruit it seemed, though in fact the table was sweet in the blossoms of it.