“The lamplight was warm and the apartment still and snug. At home in bed, in my private abyss of longing, the scenes I dreamed of always began like this. I could lose myself forever in that singular little face, in the pessimism of her beautiful mouth. When I imagined these phrases cast in her voice, they were almost intolerably sweet; now, sitting right beside her, it was unthinkable that I should voice them myself.”

“Very easily, i could lose myself in her...forever.”

“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 had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stand 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 am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”

“I know how ineffectual my actions are, but I do them on purpose--to punish myself. I deserve the pain that closeness to her brings. I want to hold her like this every day. I want to be the focus of her radiant smile. I let myself pretend for the duration of the song, and when its over I touch her face again and imagine that we are together.”

“But it was my parents I longed for mostly. I wanted to be a little girl again and cuddle into them, wriggling in between them like I'd done in their bed when I was three or four, snug and warm in the safest place in the world.Instead I had Hell.”

“I hadn’t heard her voice in so fucking long. I almost collapsed right there and then, her presence rolling through me, wanting to bring me to my knees like she had before.”