Katie Rose, Ashley Alongi

         Katie Rose Shrewsberry was a perfect cliché. She was beautiful, blonde haired, blue eyed. Completely oblivious to it all. And I was the boy hopelessly in love with her. Unrequited of course, which is often the way these clichés go. I settled for the label of best friend.
          With her knees curled up to her chest we would sit in some corner of the school library, hoping to steal a few minutes alone together. We would read the bible. And like pseudo conservative renegades we covered it with a book jacket from a copy of War and Peace so we weren’t bothered. I didn’t know if Katie Rose was religious, sacrilegious, sadist, evangelist or whatever. But I didn’t really care. And I suppose this is all subjective, but when she read the bible it was like listening to poetry.

         That was all we treated it as. I sat with her not to discuss ideals but be silent and listen to her. Her voice like warm breath on a frosty windowpane. All tender whispers.
Katie Rose Shrewsberry is gone now.

          Sitting in our corner, I close my eyes and breathe in the lingering smells of ink and strawberries. I try to imagine our heads bent together for just one more time, and find in my mind a memory of her voice reading to me:

You are my dove hiding among the rocks on the side of a cliff. Let me see how lovely you are! Let me hear the sound of your melodious voice.

And in this moment, I understand what she was trying to tell me all along