The feeling of screaming inside, screaming at mom to say something, to break this silence that tears our family apart. As if the conversation wasn’t destructive enough she leaves afterwards to buy cigarettes. She leaves us to suffer alone instead of trying to pick up the pieces. Oh, and we are suffering. My brother isolates himself in his room, blaming himself for her return to the addiction while my depression turns every thought around in my mind. It is the silence after her words that tears us asunder. As the sickly guilt festers inside us while we seek out distractions. A mother that isn’t there. A mother that cares in her strange way yet isn’t caring. Children without love, children that turn elsewhere for comfort while their family sinks to the ocean sea, the flames that burn it — a blinding light. They are caught, like moths, unable to turn away as tears run down their faces.
Not her words tore us asunder, the spaces between them did. How I envy Iccarus for he felt at least sun’s warm kiss as he fell while I fall in silence, in darkness, in cold. The flames burn cold, the pain is dark and we shatter, once more. Tomorrow she expects us to put our pieces back together, to put on our masks and pretend. She doesn’t want to see our tear-strained faces; doesn’t want to address that our family has long since burned down and sunken to the bottom of the sea. Instead, she forces us to hold the shards together, ignores how our fingers bleed from their sharp edges. We have a role to play, the show must go on, even if the theatre has sunken.
In that way, we have long since drowned, only the ghost she sees of us is left. But even those ghosts want to be laid to rest, wish to end their torment.
