Do you remember when we questioned the universe?

It was just a cliché sleepover with cliché pillow fights and cliché reruns of The Vampire Diaries.

It was just starting to become winter outside and I asked if you wanted hot chocolate and you said only if I had whipped cream and marshmallows and I did have whipped cream and marshmallows so we made hot chocolate and sat by the window.

You compared stained glass to jello and I compared stained glass to nothing because I knew whatever I said would never sound as much like a poem as you just had.

I asked you how you felt about God and religion and the world and your place in the world and you said that religion should define the way you live and not the way you die.

You said that religion used to be such a beautiful thing but then humans got their hands on it and tarnished it and crumpled it and broke it like everything else that humans get their hands on.

You said that maybe there is a God and maybe there’s not a God and maybe there’s three hundred and twelve Gods exactly but you wanted to believe because thinking about how there could be nothing after you die is too scary a thought.

You said all this looking out the window with your hot chocolate and whipped cream and marshmallows, comparing stained glass to jello, and I wanted to agree with you because that is a scary thought, but it’s so hard to pray while I’m doing my chemistry homework and my mother is crying in the other room and my hot chocolate is too cold to sip.