and let me kick you off a bungee

I feel safe in his embrace, feel a way I never did in the arms of Momma, pressed to her side forcibly, as if she thought I would run if given the chance (perhaps I would). And maybe that's just the case, that if she ever turned away for too long, let me go for just a heart beat, I would've taken flight on hooves that were so unsteady, I would run so fast the ground would slip away beneath me and I'd ascend to a place never before touched by a child so young— but no, she lingered over me, loomed and doted as my shredded body crumbled to the dust and panic overwhelmed me. She turned away, she let me waste away in the sands the way she had left her own mother, reversing the roles as she lets the ocean's song cover up my wails. Did she even love me? It was a questionable thought, wondering if I was truly loved by the unpredictable, catastrophic storm, with plucked wings and warm, thick blood running red down her legs, ignored as if she hadn't gnawed her way through skin.

How could anyone have let me exist in her presence? A suicidal, careless mother and her death seeking, distant child, together in a torturous, terrifying relationship as the mother becomes obsessive and depressive, but distant all the same. In her manic moods, she would become something of a marvel, arguing to the air around her, yelling at the top of her lungs at something with no heat signature (who is it that haunts you?). And I, the silenced child, witnessing the meltdown as it happens, listening to her whispers and gradual plummet into the abyss, I would fall with her, pushed and pulled down into the depths, trapped in thick black. It suffocated me, leaked into my lungs and filled them up, stretched them out, threatened to crush me beneath the weight, beneath the pressure of living.

For a moment, while apa descended, I considered what would happen if I let myself sink, if I let the ocean swallow me up the way I had watched it swallow Sikeax up time and time again before she abandoned us (abandoned me), would I live to make it out? Would I sink and struggle, or go easily, and drift peacefully to the bottom, where the world would let me go, and everyone would forget about the daughter of the Damned?

But apa is there, and he is holding me tightly, and I am shaking, sobbing beside him. I want to push further, want to melt against him because I cannot face the world as I am, as a catastrophic child, as a curse. I am a bad omen, wrapped up in mist and myth, a taboo name to be whispered by only the bravest individuals, daunting and silent as I move through the night like a foul ghoul. "No, apa, nézz rám! Tudod apa!" It's a plea, a need for confirmation, a demand for agreement, because I know, I know that I am no soothing sight, that I am not the beautiful child the world wants to see, that it wants to keep.

I am crushed, crashing and burning the same way I have watched my mother fall, like a pitiful, sobering image of an angel, plummeting from the sky in a spiral of horror, in a way that burned up the sky and outshone the stars in the night, even the sun could not compare. "Hagyod őket csinálni! Itt vagyok!" It's pleading, it's knowing, he could have told them no, but he didn't, he let them! He doesn't want me either, and my throat is snagging, caught, the words are falling out and I'm choking, gasping, suffocating on my sorrow, on my doubts. Does he not love me either? Will I live now as an orphan, a tragically forgotten child, cast aside and replaced with better children, with children who weren't so hideous.

"Nem leszek, mint ő, itt maradok." I agree, whether her means my mother or Sikeax, it's up for interpretation.