Psalm 23

"The lord is my Shepard, I shall not want"

Leo Van Damme gripped the yellowed paper in his trembling hands.

"He maketh me lie down in green pastures,

He leadeth me beside the still waters."

It had been at least twenty years since he'd seen these words, and they still had the same effect as they'd had back then.

"He restoreth my soul."

Every last syllable, every last letter housed the great loving sentimental act, and the hellish rage of Leo's father. Each earthshaking vowel, each thunderous consonant reverberated between his head and his heart with such speed it brought him to the cusp of tears. Leo was his father's vision, however nothing Leo could have possibly ever been, would be perfect enough for the admirable and important Monsignor Van Damme.

"He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name sake."

Reading the words that he had so long ago forsaken, Leo found himself longing to be held by his father, and healed, like so many others by his chosen profession. After his father’s death every embrace felt stifling, it reminded him of his youth living under the yoke of the Church, and his father’s godly aspirations for him. He had spent so much energy in his adult life trying to escape his father’s celestial reach, and he though he went about it rather well. He left the catholic inbred suburbs for a lost urban center – long ago forgotten by gentrification – where he’d have to find his own deities. However his best laid plans evaporated away, after last night. drunk off his ass behind Ray’s Liquor, he faced the wrath of his father’s disappointment and the devilish repercussions of said alienation. Having lost his inner-city enlightenment to the demons of loneliness and apathy, Leo found himself falling back in into the faith of his childhood.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”

Leo sat in the darkened room, the afternoon light filtering through the dilapidated blinds, desperately holding the withered paper in his fingers. Written long ago on the yellowed paper in the practiced calligraphy of a catholic priest was the 23^rd Psalm. Well-worn creases ran across the sheet like city blocks, dividing the fanciful text into simplified bits. The Monsignor carried this piece of paper with him to every funeral he ever lorded over, long since memorized, he found solace in that fact that the words were still there - the verses easily within reach during trying times. Much like how a cowboy carries a bullet in the seam of his hat, Leo’s father carried the handwritten scrap of verse for his biblical six-shooter – custom .23 gauge.

“I will fear no evil: for thou art with me,

Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

Leo folded the paper and placed it gently back in the shoe box containing the last of the trinkets his father had left him. He closed the box, and quietly kissed the lid, before looking up, smiling, and whispering a humbled, “Amen.”