Page 165 of Under the Waves

My lungs still breathed.

Time carried on.

The outside world sped away.

And no matter how quickly I ran, I could never seem to catchup.

I made my way back to my room. The journey a blur.

Covered my body in clothes. Hid the atrocities, the scars.

Threw my hair back in two braids to deal with some other time.

I jumped onto my bed. Pulled out my old, comfort Marvel comic.

And let my mind escape for a while.

“You are broken in the head, Poppy Wells. You break every single person in your life until they are reduced to ashes. You don’t deserve that boy of yours. I don’t know how you ever thought you did.”

You break them.

You break them.

I break them.

As the hours passed, the voices never quietened.

They rung throughout the house like a cruel, little lullaby.

Even as I closed my eyes,

the screams were never as loud as the ones inside my head.

Why was I not enough for you, mom?

My cheeks dampened. Eyes stung and itched and burned and I just wanted to bury my head so deep inside the ground I’d never be able to hear another thought again.

Why

was

I

not

enough?

I never asked to be her daughter.

I never asked to be here.

So maybe…it would all be better if I just stopped trying to fit into a world that was so adamant at keeping me out.

“Poppy!” She screamed, over and over again until it was all that I could hear. “Poppy, help me, please!”

I should go and help her—no.

I was not the parent here.