A Lonely Step

We were both of us young when I walked her home from the pub that night. She held my arm while explaining to me why she was a virgin and would be until she married. She didn’t ask me inside “..my parents” she explained a little sheepishly. So we sat together on her doorstep, the stone top step of two the two that kept her front door from the narrow footpath and the cobbled gutter of that dark and narrow backstreet of her dark and narrow home. Leaning back against her door we talked of her Catholic god who I clinging to my dark and narrow hopes did not question in that way she did my godlessness. With no dark side she talked to make a Christian of me while I did as best I could at being as honest with her as she was with me. She gave to me her rosary beads and asked if sometimes I might pray. What should I pray for? For the peace of the World, and for its homeless and its children. Of course. She was short haired, blue eyed, blonde, Slender and small breasted. Her name? Did it begin with a K? The sound of a K? We hugged and lightly kissed as we said goodnight while the world’s wars raged and its homeless and its children bled and died. We never saw each other again. In a decent just and Christian world she might have known the life she wanted. Perhaps she might Have married Christ and now and then could feel her prayers were heard. I sometimes wonder how many young men had sat with her on that cold and hard stone step and now wished they could recall her name.