A Holy Love

*sMILe* this story made me cry. Rarr.

Writes a surgeon:

I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy,clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon has followed with religious fervour the cruve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumour in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.

Her young husband is in the room He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry-mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily?
The young woman speaks.

"Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks.
"Yes," I say,"it will. It is because the nerve was cut."

She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. "I like it," he says. "It is kind of cute."

All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a God. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I so close can see how he twists his own lips to accomodate hers, to show her that their kiss still works.

Dr Richard Selzer, Mortal Lessons

*sniffles* need i say more? A holy love, indeed. And much sought after :)