Mellow Morning Row

Prologue

Tear drops are like kisses from the sky. Taking a deep breath in, Emma let the earthy smell of granite touched rain permeate her bitter mood. Showered in the peaceful continuity of pit-pattering rain, momma's screams were a mere echo. She was worried again, triggered once again by poppa's inability to find work.

Another day, another fail. "Do you think I want to behave like this...the same mistake, over and over again...all talk..." The same repetitive spiel. It wasn't her papa now, standing scowling yet silent at her mama's fiery attacks. Over and over again, every single seed of self worth was uprooted by those words. Like a uprooted wilted plant clinging to the last of its roots, Emma had long resigned herself to a monotonous routine of neither expectation nor failure. Better her mama's complaints than theirs.

It seemed she could leave all her problems behind, emptying the scenes of debauchery and trauma that constantly threatened to overwhelm her. One breath. Another. A third, subtle yet suffocatingly long. Her finger dig into the dirty unpainted walls of a destitute apartment, knees red from the pain of kneeling for the numerous hours since the heavy downpour's beginning's as a drizzle. Her heart sunk, to know that she would have to get up eventually.

Walk out the door. Walk over to them. As Emma lifted her head out the window, gentle kisses intermingled with tears of grief. Mama won't know her little darling cried. Never a consoling figure, it would be at least one less burden for a woman emptied long ago of love and patience, filled with disappointment and bitterness. She would never come to know of her little one's hardest battles away from home. This, was a lament that would send the merciless figure into tears years after her realization. "If I knew then what I do now, the things I'd do differently." Such is an anecdote of regrets, against the merciless clock that would never stop turning.

So eventually Emma did rise up from her knees, and she would walk to school.

Ch 1

Emma was a stellar student in her youth, winning praise from her teachers yet the hatred of her fellow peers. She had an uncanny fondness for sweets and food, a coping mechanism developed to handle the worst of her memories and struggles. Yet this very trait of hers is what earned the animosity of naïve children, who have yet to learn to judge beyond appearances. If you had asked the girl herself of her childhood memories, and the story of her journey, Emma would be beside herself in discomfort and speechlessness. "And what makes you think I'd want to tell you, or recall memories like that?"

Yet the rest of her life travelled in such a manner that her first, second, and third grade years would perhaps be the most joyful of memories in her twenty some years. At the very least, the roof over her head was managed by a fussy yet loving mother, and hopeless romantic of a father whose only point of pride was in academia. They were a loving family. A feature Emma was endlessly grateful for. But a loving family could not protect a young and fragile heart, never mind a poor family against the judgements suffered as a result of poverty.

Emma's grades didn't last, and neither did the love she receive her teachers. Middle school was a transitional period in her life, a time where a loose hierarchy was constructed at school that unsettled the former dynamic amongst her small class. In her small town lacking in children, eighty-six classmates would accompany each other throughout their youths and well into the first steps of adulthood. Neither the athletic one or the intelligent one, or even the sociably intuitive one, Emma lost her place in a tightly knit community that ostracized her from the very start.

In middle school, she was absolutely certain she would never want to come back. With her father and mother finding better jobs elsewhere, Emma left the small town she grew up in to try her fortunes in search of a new place of belonging. A heart brimming with expectations, and hope that reignited was all that she brought with her in search for a friend, just one person to find comfort with.