My mind is silent again. More silent than it was before.
My mouth goes dry at the sight before me. I barely hear mom when she speaks.
"Here we are! Surprise!"
The queen sized bed seems to stretch on forever in front of me, too spacious, too empty. The sheets are perfectly draped, the pillows don't have a single rogue thread sticking out. The whole thing is brand new, lifeless, a blank canvass to replace a messy one. My heart might've stopped.
"I thought we'd finally get you a new bed," she says, going over to the queen size, and my body becomes numb. "It's more comfortable, and it'll be like a fresh start for you."
A fresh start, a blank canvas, an eraser—
I struggle to find the words, but there are none. There is only this cold sensation, this paralysis.
Tremors I can't feel begin to shake through my bones, through my veins. My nails dig into my palms. I don't feel the pain.
"So, you can go and explore the section and find one you love. We'll bring it back home immediately. Dad's already moved the bunk bed out, so you can try it out tonight!"
He already...
Tears filter my vision of the unused sheets, those perfectly placed pillows becoming stains of striking color in the watery blur. Dad took away my bed, our bed, it's gone, it's gone...
"Kingsley... are you alright?"
I look up at her, and a heavy tear falls to the ground. To me, it's loud. The impact of it on the floor is a staggering earthquake. It shakes my world. I pray my mom can read the begging in my eyes as I stand, wordless and destroyed—
"Kingsley," she murmurs, walking to me. She pulls me into her arms, and I watch another tear splash on the ground, another seism. But she just murmurs into my ear, stroking my hair.
"I understand, it's hard. But Maya doesn't live with us anymore. She doesn't sleep in that bed anymore, Kingsley."
It's so cold inside. It's so quiet. It's as dead as the bed in front of me, it's inanimate. And from the middle of that numbness...
She pulls away, her hands on my cheeks. She can barely hold my face as it shakes. So she grips it harder. Her fingers feel like the bars to a prison cell.
...from the middle of that numbness springs a raging storm.
"I'm sad too, baby," she says, and feeble tears spring to her eyes. They're nothing like mine, like the natural disasters pooling in my pupils. A deafening scream erupts inside me, ripping through my soul. "We have to accept it now. We'll do it together, okay? Together."
She wraps her arms around me again, and with every new tear that goes ignored on my cheeks, with every silent sob, I feel myself shrinking. Shrinking, and sinking further into my storm, with nothing to pull me out of the furious waves, because no one sees. Because they're only tears.
And so I drown, choking in my mother's soothing arms.
YOU ARE READING
Asunder
Teen Fiction"Promise me. Promise me you'll never beg someone to stay when they're already gone." Tangled up a million knots, Kingsley has lost faith in happiness. Her heavy heart struggles to continue to beat, and she is slowing down. It seems to her that the w...
