Short Stories

She was My Religion

                                                           Religion was Her

I wasn't supposed to be a main character. I really wasn't. I was to stay out of the drama, keeping my thoughts to myself as I told the story. I was supposed to be the narrator, not the lover of the girl that was the main show, the main centerpiece. She caught me, and like a bird in a cage, I was trapped.

Her name was something of a fairy tale with happy endings and feathery feelings that lasted forever. Alexandria, Alexandria, Alexandria. I could say it all day and everyday, without hesitation. Alexandria, Alexandria, Alexandria. She always hated her name, told everyone to call her Alex or Alexis. I would always call her Alexandria.

She smoked and she did drugs, the opposite of any common fairy tale. She had bruised knees and greasy hair, but the most perfect personality and the most intricate design of flaws and perfections I have never seen before and never will see again. Alexandria was just an imperfect perfection in this place we call life, even with her smell of ashtrays and her rough shoves.

She was religion, with her greased hair and tan skin, her eyes darker than the chocolate she always eats in class. I was the screw up in the design of her fate, unaccounted for and just shoved in without any warning. Me, with my ugly blue eyes and my dark hair and practically translucent skin.

She had a rosary in her soul that I could practically feel a mile away. No matter how many times she cursed and spat, or tried to make the cross dissipate like the smoke that blows out of her mouth, she never will get rid of it. She had crosses etched in her skin, and even through the grave, a cross loomed over her. My mom didn't understand why I cried so hard when I found out she died; "She was a no good smoker, it appears," she said to me, in our good Christian household. "I'm so sorry for your loss," She said to the parents, in their Christian household. Fake, fake, fake.

Alexandria, Alex, Alexis, all the names you went by or didn't go by, but nobody called you beautiful or unique, wanted and necessary. Sure, the smoke that drifted from your mouth never solidified, but I never thought it'd dissipate forever until now. Nobody would understand how much I loved you in our story; the one where you died and the one where I could've stopped you. 

Word Count: 422