Beyond The Broken Glass3: Finally Mended [complete]

1.) Our Last Day

If a year ago someone was to tell me that I'd be running from life. I'd laugh at them and tell them to go to hell. In all actuality, they would be right. I was constantly running from life. Running from all the threats that my actions brought. I was no longer responsible for just me anymore either. There were others who needed me to protect them, to shield them from hazards that came. I did my best but it never felt good enough.

Kyson sat in the grass playing with an old action figure that he found in our last house. It was all battered and scraped up but he didn't mind.

It still works mommy.

That was what he told me as he argued with me when I told him to throw it away. He gave it a bath and a new cape made from an old sock. He loved it. Just as much as he loved Milani. She was infatuated with all the pretty things. Flowers and streamers and butterflies. She never complained about having to move around so much.

I, myself, knew better than to settle into a home too comfortably. We'd just have to pick up and move on at the drop of a dime whenever the heat came too close to the front door. That's how it's been the last two years. Running and changing lives just like we change underwear. I never truly got to know myself. I was whoever that folder said I was. Typically when people say that's the old me they mean it symbolically, but for us it was literal.

"What got you so wrapped up?" Brandon asked as he came to join us. It was our last day in Alabama and we were just enjoying a nice breeze by a stream.

"Where are we going next?" I asked deflecting. He's been trying his hardest to make our lives normal but it wasn't very much he could do.

"I don't know." He mumbled as he snatched a patch of grass. The sound of children's laughter overshadowed our grief. We try so damn hard to shield them from the harsh reality we live. I know it's easy now but when they get older they're gonna realize how horrible their life was. They'll resent us the way I resented my parents.

"Where you wanna go?"

"It don't matter to me, Bri." He said as his eyebrows crashed together and a frown settled on his face. He continued to rip up the grass as he spoke as little as possible. I laid my head on his shoulder and hummed softly.

"I love you, okay?"

I could hear the hammering of his heart as I laid my head against his chest now. For a moment his delay in response to my declaration felt sickening but he squeezed me tightly and the burn began to fade before it settled into my soul.

"love you too."

As we cleaned up our belongings and trash. We hiked back to the little house we were staying in. It wasn't anything grand. Just a two-bedroom with peeling paint and cracks in the walls and ceiling.

The kids didn't mind as long as we were all together they didn't care if we stayed in a shelter. That was the beautiful thing about their age. They weren't picky or demanding. We packed up what we could which was mostly just our clothes and anything that would lead back to us. We threw them in the trunk.

"Say bye house." I sighed as I held them in my arms.

"Bye house." They both spoke in unison as we loaded them into the car yet again. I inhaled the air one last time and tried to push all of the memories we had created in this house to the back of my mind. He put the key in the ignition and gave life to the engine. We took off down the road as we headed off to another city in another state to another house.

"I want them to live a normal life. They deserve that much."

"You still in denial," He responded nonchalantly. "This is our normal."

"And you're still content," I fired back smoothly, Not an ounce of my words were yelled. "Brandon, we have nowhere to lay roots. We basically just drifting through the country raising kids in an ill-fitting life. They won't go to prom or graduate high school or make long lasting friendships. They won't get girlfriends or boyfriends and settle down."

"They're five and ten," He snapped as he turned his face up in annoyance. "We don't need to be worried about that kinda shit right now!"

"If not now then when! When they're depressed and socially awkward! I can't keep doing this shit to them!"

"Stop yelling!" Kyson whined as our bickering awoke him from his sleep. I turned around to see he was rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Meanwhile, Mimi had her eyes glued on me already, hands already over her ears.

"I'm sorry baby." I reached back to take her hand in mine. "We didn't mean to yell."

"Don't—like it." She shook her head as she released my hand to plug her ears. "I don't like it, mommy."

"I'm so sorry," I whispered as my own tears began to pool behind my eyelids. This was madness. Having to uproot them every couple of months and move someplace totally different. And they're young they don't know any better. My life wasn't what I imagined it to be either. I was thrown into a den of wolves by my own father and then a man I thought loved me turned out to be my demise.

The man I love now started out as an enemy. All the people who told me to stay away told me that he was no good for me, that he was danger on legs. I ignored them all. I thought they were just trying to control me. In hindsight, if I would've listened I would be on a different path. I'd be in a college dorm taking up whatever major my heart desired. I'd be participating in all the things the typical college students did.

Now my biggest thing in life was to survive. I wasn't learning any skills for a workforce or higher education. I was improving on ways to stay alive by ducking and dodging bullets, and cooking my own meals because eating out or dining in was no longer on our list of norms.

I couldn't even sit in a room let alone a house long enough to think about who I was before this all happened. They closed in on us every time a chance for reminiscing came about. Our last day in each of our homes was always filled with grief, longing, and urgency all wrapped in one.