The morning is started by her door bursting open. In a startle, she had shot up from her huddled position.
Her father was yelling, her mother was crying.
The static that had once been Violet, has been replaced by the hoarse voice of her father in her ears. A noisy static, unlike Violet's gentle kind.
Laila is used to the yelling, but today it just felt off. As if something bad will happen.
She barely hears what the man is saying, but she can feel her face wet with tears. Her tears.
She is not exactly sure when she had started crying. She cannot even make out what it had been that upset her father so.
Maybe, just maybe, she was meant to open a window? She had closed the door but had not yet opened a window.
Laila stands there as her father scolds her. His voice rings throughout her ears. A painful ringing: how devastating it is. Her mother's tears look almost fake to her. She understands that they are not, her mother has always been a crier.
When Laila was little, the first time her father had backhanded her, her mother had cried for her. She had apologized repeatedly as she pet Laila's soft hair soothingly, but Laila knew she deserved it. She cannot recall why she deserved it, but she is absolutely positive that it was her fault.
Her father is a good man. He is a righteous man, like her mother is a merciful woman.
Laila just stays still. If she moves, she will make herself an apparent threat to the predator in front of her.
In this home, she is but trapped prey. She can feel it in her bones. She can feel herself shrinking, to be less threatening to the man that towers over her.
Laila understands that it is common in nature for parents to eat their young if they know they cannot survive, but Laila is good at surviving! She can make herself small if that's what they wish. She may not know why they are mad, but she has been good. She has been strong.
They have not cracked her yet. That proves she is strong. Right?
She is their child. And they are strong. So, she is strong.
A loud noise fills the room; a noise derived from anger and love. A sharp, serious noise; an echoing crack. A gentle burn covers her cheek, a feeling she is all too familiar with.
Her eyes raise up at her frustrated father, the pain in her face begins to sting as a hand moves to cup her face. Her hand.
He had hit her. His love once more a physical kind. A type of love only saved for her. It only exists for when he wishes to educate her for her wrongdoings. But can she really learn if she has no idea what it is to be learning from?
Surely, she can. She always can, but she never does.
No wonder she is so easily swayed. She truly is ignorant of the world. Too slow to process what she requires to; what her parents require of her.
She does not blame them for her being so stupid. They have done their best to educate her; she just never learns.
She may know the way of the animal kingdom, yet she will never understand the way of her home. The way of the life she is raised in.
Not the way of the crushing walls, not the way those walls talk, not the bones that have grown with her, nor the way that they do not fit in her skin.
She will never understand why her parents show their love this way, nor why they love her at all. Such mercy should not be given to someone so substandard. It is pitiful to see their feelings go to waste on her.
Laila adores her parents so much. They are a wonderful family. Their home is always loud, and the welcomed silence is too unfamiliar for her.
She knows of the silence that follows her after love is shown. Today will be no different, she assumes. Her parents will go about their loving ways as she is forced to listen to the walls. The walls that mock her every move, every breath she takes, and the look in her eyes. A look she has never seen for herself. The mirror does not reflect her own but reflects her bones instead.
She does not like her bones, they ache, and they hurt, and they tell her the brutal truth. She does not believe her bones; they are just lying to her like the walls.
Nobody tells the truth like her parents. They care so much for her, always speaking genuinely. Just for her. Their love is just for her.
It is special and it is hers. It is warm beneath it all. And love is warm.