This I can not compare, my love, when words are elusive and images confined to worlds my eyes can't see. They are blinded by the sheer bliss of your angelic presence as you walk beside me, hand in hand. Our love sprung from the forbidden flower, a symbol of love forever flowing like that of the living waters, our soul being as one. I have no doubts; each step is sure, soft, and secured. Misled no more, I do not fear being among the slippery rocks for you are guiding me, holding me, leading me each step within, not by foothold, not by rope but by the sheer trust and the security of your total being. By my own step I will follow you as you unravel each knot of my broken life. Silence and peace allows me to be what I will for I am safe within your reach, no slippery rocks lay before me. Your voice echoes in a space inside my heart and my head whispers of words keeping me safe, consoling me, promising me, guiding me. Your words hold true, safely tucked in the folds of my heart never still; ceaselessly to stay forever captive. Restless, back and forth, allowed to fly but never flee.

* * *

It is hot, humid August. It is James Brennan's birthday, his deathday too. He wakens at dawn, startled by bird song and the orange sun burning the faded floral wallpaper across from his tumbled bed.

'It's my birthday,' he remembers. 'I'm seventy-six today. Where did it go?'

Climbing painfully from a sore mattress, standing in striped pajamas by the window, James stares gardenwards. These days it's all weed killing, backache and wishes. The roses are already burning in the sun. Clematis cling like growing children to mothers. Next door's dog barks. A cat scales a glass sharp wall and drops beside its shadow under an apple tree, stalking anxious sparrows with the first sun. Under the broken birdhouse a mouse plays with a nibble of yesterday's bread.

The last star melts into dawnrise.

There's heat in the breathless August day already.

James Brennan, seventy-six, sitting in his kitchen. Silent. The house, holding its breath around him, the roof oven baked. James's thick, veined hands brush toast crumbs from the wooden tabletop. He shifts his faded, slippered feet and dust dances giddily on the dull, patched carpet. The clock on the dresser ticks hurriedly and the letter box snaps awake.

James walks to the hall and picks up bills and ads that promise discounts and holidays abroad. James has never been out of Ireland, never crossed the sea. His tired eyes examine the envelopes at arms length. There are no birthday cards to sigh over - these days, who would know?

Returning to the familiar kitchen he slides a knife along his letters, slitting out their folded information. It's better than nothing. Even if the electricity is red and overdue. At least they keep in touch. James looks at the sunlight shining blindly on his glazed, brown teapot and pours more lukewarm tea. He sits and thinks about birthdays back then. Cakes and celebrations and the long dead who cared.

Back when.

'Time flies,' he says aloud. He talks to himself most days now - who else will listen? Up in the still, shadowed parlour a clock chimes the hour and James rises tiredly, prepares to face the day. He turns on the wireless. The news assaults his soul. The world is littered with dead children and pain. Bad news amuses while the ad men slip in a jingle. The world is mad with cruelty. He turns a dial and foreign voices cackle urgently in the ether. Talking violence in tongues. Then he finds Mozart and the day is saved by Cherubino.

* * *

James dresses and walks, cane and clothe cap, to the front door. He checks the windows and the bolts and all's secure. When the nighttime house creaks with its own age, James thinks of burglars and trembles in case they invade him.

What a world.

James swings open the front door and Ellen Kelly stands there, smiling like sunlight.

'Happy birthday, James.'

No longer astonished, James smiles back and sighs because Ellen isn't there.

'Ellen?' he whispers. Ellen Kelly, ten-years-old last week. He's been seeing Ellen a lot lately. She walked behind him all the way to the hushed library yesterday and when he sat to rest in Carolyn Park she was standing under a tree, waiting in its shade.

'I didn't forget,' Ellen says.

'I know, angel, I know.'

'Will you come out to play?'

'I can't Ellen. You're dead.'

The sun slides down the street and settles on James's house and Ellen fades like a startled shadow.

'Poor Ellen,' James whispers.

James avoids the supermarket. It's too complicated. Grim check out people urgent to get home. Babes bawling immediate needs. Bald headed young men pushing forward, rings in their ears and uneasy rapine eyes. Never stare back. Girls demanding more. Car parks cluttered with stress earned money. Housewives hurrying, car exhausts, exhausted.

Supermarkets.

Too big, too modern. Too lonely for James.

He goes to smaller stores, chats with familiar people, and gets milk and eggs and some fresh bread. Outside the charity shop, Mrs. Barret from Number Twenty-Nine nods an inquisitive greeting.

'How are you keeping?' she asks, looking past him at the bargains in the window.

'Grand, thank God. Yourself?'

'Couldn't be better.'

Life is strangled with lies.

James walks home through the heating streets.

Sanctuary at seventy-six.

James in his armchair in the parlour looking out on the road. Hearing the parlour's ten time chime and the long day yawning ahead like a dreadful eternity. The terror of ten a.m. with nothing to do and outside bright little girls hurry through the morning, sun on their heads, time on their hands. Feet clattering, black tights, skirts just short of sin. Making promises.

James despises this time of day. Already too hot for the garden and nothing to fill the mind until making something at lunchtime. Light sustenance for the long, lengthening afternoon stretching like an empty road going nowhere.

* * *

James tries to read but even in glasses the words are a blur.

'Ellen,' he whispers and her name rings in his head like a tolling bell.

'Ellen Kelly, Kelly Ellen, Kellen Nelly.'

James plays with her name. His eyes close. He becomes delirious with dreaming and hears distantly the brass handle under the Brassoed letterbox clattering once. James opening the wide door and Ellen is there, ten-year-old and lovely, framed in the sun like a morning miracle. Ellen Kelly, budding with girlhood and childfresh happiness.

'Will you come out to play?'

From behind, a little ghost in the dark hallway, smiling.

James, twenty-two, confused and in love. With little Ellen.

'I'll come with you, then', Ellen, always agreeable. 'We'll go to the shops together. If that's all right?'

Her mother agrees. 'It's all right with me, dear.'

James and Ellen walking down the path with mama at the door, waving at the mother, waiting until they are beyond the gate, forever worrying about crossing roads and unsuspected illnesses. Tuberculosis. Pneumonia. Measles. Mumps. You name it.

James and Ellen, hand in hand, magnetic affection drawing them closer, talking, laughing, a pair apart from others. In love. Ellen's raven hair curling around her tiny, elfin ears. Ellen, quiet and reliable as the Sun.

On the way back they short cut thorough the August woods. A long short cut. Still talking. Their words tumbling like thistledown on the hot butterflied silence. In the deep green they settle in shade and kiss among fern leafs, innocently, while no one is watching. They kissed like that for months.

But this time it came to an end. Someone saw them - a little girl in his arms, her lips glued to his lips, kissing passionately, forever lost in love.

Her mother screamed - he still remembers her high yelling voice. She screamed as if someone had died. She beat Ellen. She pulled at her hair tossing her this way and that, calling her a whore. She was only ten.

Then the police came.

* * *

It happened so fast. Accusations, hatred, lawyers, trial. But no matter what they did to him he couldn't forget the tears in little Ellen's eyes when they took her away.

A month later James was sentenced to two years.

Two years for a kiss.

High security, hard labor prison where people kill for a pack of cigarettes. But he survived somehow on dreams and vision of a small girl in his arms.

At ten, Ellen smelled of love and roses.

At eleven, Ellen, discarded, like a toy wound down, broken and lonely.

'What have they done to James?'

'He died in jail!' Her mother yelled every time.

Tears on Ellen's bitten lips. Eyes red with pain. Soul seared. Ellen goodbye.

'Why mother?'

Abandoned Ellen, quietly praying for him to return.

But two months since his imprisonment, pale Ellen, was alone with sickness teasing her young lungs, her heart crying for love. Ellen's innocence like petals blowing on grass, dancing readily away. Crowns of thorns for Ellen's virgin bridehood. Veils of tears.

Ellen ill.

A year later his beloved girl-child was slowly dying.

'Poor Ellen,' people whisper. Respect for the dead.

Another year and James leaves the prison. But it's too late.

Little Ellen's black blood on her spitting lips. The flowers on her grave stiff in frost. Brown leaves tumbling, reburying her. No more kissing. Ellen twelve, never thirteen.

Mother behind the coffin. And rain for a lifetime after that.

Clock chime. Ding. One. Ding. Two. Et Cetera.

James struggles from a dream speaking her name into the listening shadows.

'Ellen?'

The pitch dark shadows silent as dead lips. Marble graveyard lips, cold as stone. Ivy and moss. Memories haunting his present. James shivers and steps into the window sun. Rubs his thick veined hands. Prays. Then he makes lunch. Tomatoes and ham. He dreams the evening away - half out of life. Later, a seat in the garden looking towards the singing sunset.

Blackbirds and sparrows.

The clock in the parlour chimes twelve heartbeats. Night comes hot and bothered.

Climbing into an empty bed, James turns off the sidelight and silver shadows huddle against the floral wallpaper. Stars look in at his graying face. A hot August moon in the open window. Soft as silence, apple blossoms and Ellen's smile.

* * *

Ellen is the same, sad ten-year-old child with love in her gentle heart, standing there by his bed. Faithful, beautiful Ellen, waiting.

'Do you want me now?'

'Yes.'

'Are you sure?'

Tears in his eyes. 'We can play now, Ellen, If you like. Take me with you, my love.'

'Come on then...' she offered him her little hand. 'You don't know how much I missed you.'

James rising from his bed, leaving his seventy-six years between the laundered sheets. Soaring through the moonlight with little Ellen in his arms, the pair of them shooting like comets into Eternity.

The clock in the parlour ticks and tocks and finally stops.

Forever.

The End