Sitting on a small picnic blanket, smiling larger than the sun, but softer than the snow, is Violet. Violet in all of who she is.
Violet who knows herself like a pen knows the page.
It made Laila fill with envy, but she would not be like her mother. She will not be upset that she is losing her youth every time she takes a shallow breath.
A breath she does not wish to take.
Violet's shoulder length black hair frames her face. Her voice a distant echo as Laila just listens to the girl talk.
She is absolutely ravishing.
It is not a thought Laila must hold, but she nonetheless feels it filling her chest as if her lungs were overflowing with water.
Almost as if she were drowning, but she is not drowning. It is just her heart admiring the person she adores most. After her parents that is.
They sit there for an hour or so, Laila always loses track of time with Violet around. Violet's voice is the static in her ears. Violet's hand on hers is the nail grounding her.
The way Violet's hand cups Laila's cheek as she leans in, as if Laila were fragile like glass. She is anything but glass; her parents have yet to shatter her.
No, it's the soft understanding of her lips on Laila's. The stillness and compassion of something so desired.
A desire she should not want. That, she had known from the beginning.
She had known this would not work in her favor.
A secret she only wished to hold close, so nobody else could steal it; could not take the one thing she still wants to herself.
Please, God, let her be greedy just this once.
She may plead as much as she wishes, but greed is a sin to her god.
She cannot be greedy, no matter how much her heart aches for this.
There is so much about herself she does not like. Her heart, begging to be greedy, and her brain, which knows she cannot listen to her heart.
She cannot follow her heart like this, but maybe, just maybe, she can be greedy this once.
She can beg on her knees for forgiveness later.
Laila spends most of her evening with Violet, as they often do.
It is better than being home. In a cold, violent house. A house where she cannot wear a pretty dress.
A house where she cannot speak her feelings is a house that only crushes her within the walls more every day.
She wishes she could be a child again. A colorful, warm house, tasty food, and holidays.
Laila cannot wait for Halloween. She loves to go trick or treating. She loves being a kid again in a time where all her youth is truly slipping away.
There could be a day where she blinks, and suddenly all she had ever dreamt of having, will be gone.
Her carefully crafted bedroom, frozen in time.
If the day comes where her time freezes forever, she hopes the last words she will hear are "my girl."
May at least one of her dreams come true for her. If she cannot dream of Violet, she could at least hear her parents voices full of love again.
Full of happiness and freedom. Without the cost of living and dying.
Her bedroom is bleak as she steps inside it. She loves the room. Well, she loves what it once was. When she was naive.
The blue walls only remind her of her sorrow. Of the ache in her bones.
The posters only remind her of who she wished to be. The day her father had busted her guitar and tore her posters.
She would never be a rockstar and he told her that fact head on.
Her father is right, he always is. He only did such a thing to take care of her.
He had only broken her mirror so she would stop comparing herself to her mother. Nobody in the world could match that beauty, so why allow his daughter to look at her reflection at night?
The room is cold. The heater had broken long ago. Like her mattress, she stopped asking for a new.
She just cuddles into her blankets; sleep never comes easy.
Laila is forced to stare at a wall or cry, and she has no reason to cry tonight.