Celeste's childhood wasn't something she loved talking about. It was filled with nothing but painful memories. Whether they were the ones from when her father, along with her brothers, left, or the ones from her mother's death and her stepfather's a...
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MY ENTIRE world seemed to crumble all at once. Reality collided with the memory from my mother's death and fear crushed along with my heart. My lungs collapsed and my chest heaved. I shook under the weight of the images embedded into my vision and silently cried when I realised that I couldn't breathe; that the oxygen had gotten knocked out of my lungs the way it had done a year ago.
Black dots accompanied my heavy tears, both of them rapidly crawling all over the place and feeding on my surroundings. They swallowed the figures standing right next to me and the equipment surrounding every corner of the room I had been trapped within. They worked as a team. One so much stronger than I could ever be. And one so much more desperate than my plea for them to disappear could ever attempt to be.
Beeping noises filled my ears and I wanted to do nothing more than to scream so loudly at them. To shut them up because they reminded me of the last time I had heard them—a year ago when Momma had died. And because they sent me back to the last time they had sunk into my mind and shut it off. Crept all the way to my lungs and suffocated them. Snatched the air I so desperately needed away from me.
They grew louder when my only wish was for them to dim. To die off. They made me aware of the rapid pace of my heart. Of its aching beats against my brittle ribcage that dug further into my flesh without crumbling into pieces. And without shattering my fragile heart into tiny fragments. Into painful ones that held the reality to how cruel the universe would always be. How merciless it had been a year earlier after hearing my sobs for my mother to come back.
After I had broken down at Enzo's room that night instead of sleeping, begging him as hopelessly as ever to do anything that would bring my mother back. Begging him to tell me that he had, for once, taken a picture of her when I forgot to do so. Or perhaps had hidden a shirt of hers that didn't smell of Heroine. That held the vanilla scent I had found comfort within back when I was younger.
He held me so tightly. And yet so gently. He comforted me. He said that Momma was in a better place, watching over both of us. That she wouldn't want to see me cry or go through more pain because of her. I was too old to believe that. But I still did. I clung onto his words and let them take control over my heart. To embrace it safely from the hurt it wasn't capable of facing.
And I only ripped them off my heart when my brother was sent to the juvie six months later. I allowed the anger to latch onto my heart and to dull its beats—to replace the words I had once considered as my safety. It was anger at everything surrounding me.
At my Momma for being selfish and leaving when I needed her the most. At Enzo for doing the exact same thing not even six months after. At my so-called father for kicking both of us out. Away from the safety he was supposed to provide us with. And lastly, at myself.
