It all started, as only the most twisted of love stories are apt to do, with a scream in a dark alley eighteen years ago, and the thud of two bodies colliding against a wall.
Life is sacred, said Father McNeill, and abortion, under any circumstances, is therefore murder; and nine moths later the baby emerged into the world the color of caramel. Its teenaged mother, the Celtic whiteness of her skin glistening with fresh tears, fingered the gold of her cross, and, in a moment of uncharacteristic malice, named the baby Delilah, after the whore of Biblical proportions.

That is the story of my parents’ ‘meeting’, and my conception, all compressed into a single sweltering evening throbbing with drums and flickering with street lamps. It’s funny, isn’t it, how Fate, that cold and classical force, chooses its instruments. My existence boils down to a blond girl in Africa who didn’t look behind her, and a drunk and angry man whose name I’ll never know. No, don’t pity me. Just listen.
As I write this, you lie quietly beside me, the Midas light of early morning softening your features into a semblance of peace. The after-rain smell of damp earth and mountain plants comes whispering through the open window, carried on the distant murmur of the sea. In this room, in this moment, there is no color, only the undefined vague darkness of sleepy dawn. Soon I must leave here, before the sun shakes off the jealous embrace of the moon-silvered sea, and tries to wake you, so still beside me, with a sliver of brightness beneath closed eyelids. But still I hesitate, trying to memorize the pattern of cracks in the white plaster of the ceiling. This is the last time I will wake up in this room. Through the window, I can see the telephone wires looping through the square of lightening sky caught in the frame. After last night, they cannot, surely, be working now, and the thought brings with it a sense of profound peace. Isolation, for me, is not the same as loneliness, especially not here. Not with you.  I think back to the storm- the brilliant flash of lightning splitting the purple sky in two, the branch breaking, the screaming wind drowning our furious voices as lights shut off suddenly and plunged us into darkness. The morning calm feels strange now, after all the chaos. It will be hard, I realize, to slip away unnoticed, with the roads blocked by rocks and the limbs of mutilated trees.

My love, I have a theory. You always did ask what I was thinking about when my eyes glazed over, so now, at long last, I can tell you. Mostly, I was thinking about a hot drum-pulsed night eighteen years ago, and a police commissioner called Sam whose refrain was ‘asking for it’. But sometimes I was thinking about beauty, and pain. You see, darling, beauty is painful because it provokes desire, desire for an aim that is unattainable. This aim is possession, and possession is impossible due to Time. Beauty is either ephemeral- the bolt of lightning, the smell of after-rain, bright flash of hummingbird’s wings- and fades before you do; or it outlasts you- the mountains, the sea- continuing on long after you are gone, and the fallen branches of the lightning-tree have grown again, and its blossom falls coldly over your grave. Possession is therefore impossible, and so Beauty hurts. Heaven is when Beauty is no longer painful, because there is no Time.
But I don’t suppose I’ll ever know.
If only I could choose, say ‘now’, and cross the border to that undiscovered country gently, to wake in this same room, in this same bed, with no Time. It would be more than I deserve, to lie in this blue stillness forever, waiting for dawn. My mother’s G-d is harsh and unforgiving, fashioned from Medieval stone.  According to Him I’d lost my right to Heaven before I opened my eyes. Maybe you’ll find out about Heaven, my angel. In my eyes you’re almost as much to blame for this as I am, although I doubt the One True Judge would agree. After all, it is your blood on the bed-sheets, not mine.
‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.’ (Matthew 5:5) Patience, counseled my mother, patience and prayer and forgiveness. But she never could bring herself to forgive. She never forgave my father, and she never forgave yours, and she never forgave me, the tiny multiplying bundle of cells inside of her which grew fat on her misery. Each breath I took in this world sucked the air from her lungs, and, like an unwilling Elizabethan pelican, she tore herself apart trying to love me, all the while hating the stranger who stared back at her with her own wild eyes. Her patience is infinite, but mine was more limited. Don’t take this personally, my love, but in my experience men’s promises are almost always empty, even His. Maybe one day the meek will inherit, and the wolf lie down with the lamb, but in this world the weak deserve their justice, and they deserve it before the sun is extinguished and the sea perishes in flames.
I watch the morning sun play across your face. Oh, you look so peaceful. You could almost be sleeping. I hope that you’re having bad dreams.
Why, when my life and your death and both our eternities hung in the balance, did you insist on remaining your father’s son? When I crumpled in your arms and told you everything, you glared at me in horror and pushed me away.
But it doesn’t matter any more. Soon this will all be over. Sam will find your body. His only son. How long before he links this collapse of world to the crying girl of eighteen years ago, who he laughed at and sent away?
If Heaven is Beauty without Time, then what is Hell?