wet your lips she said, wet your lips so I won’t tear you apart I wet my lips with the tip of my tongue the upper lip, the lower lip her right hand reached into my throat pressed her fingers hard into the tense muscles of my past wars I…

In Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time (1913–27), there are passages where the protagonist, whose name we are never told throughout this seven-volume work, is overwhelmed by a sensuous experience which triggers a flood of memories that completely overtake him. The most well-known is the episode with the…