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.