I was alone…

It was on one of those walks to Lydia’s house [her friend in New York]—I must have been thirteen—that I suddenly understood that the world was an untended place. The ground that I had thought to be mine had been torn out from under me, leaving me with an uncertain hold on the new surface. And now, walking past the jumble of shops on Broadway, I understood with a cold finality that there was no God, no Being in a blue heaven that created order, no one to pray to, to protect and guide me. …I was alone... Vera Klement