The Day Paradise Shattered

Society has a way of alienating those it should hold close. If someone is different, they are pushed to their breaking point.

But Ma fled before they could.

I never figured out what made them hate her. Was it her inability to make small talk? Her refusal to play pretend? Or the way she wore a raw realness like a suit of armour?

Ma made sure they’d never get to do the same to me. She hid me away here, on our island.

Ma was the prettiest person I'd ever seen. She was beautiful when she was helping me catch fish, turning it into a game and laughing. Ma was beautiful when we cooked over a flame, hair glowing in the firelight. When we lay beneath the stars, making up stories and breathing in the night air like it was salvation. But Ma looked best at her potter wheel, hands on clay, clothes stained, concentration narrowing her eyes, and a faint smile tugging at her lips. Ma was prettiest when she was happy, and here, that was all the time.

She tried to teach me. Showed me designs, wet the clay, held my hands as we moulded it, grinned at my impatience while waiting for it to dry. Ma taught me gentleness, showed me how to smooth the edges. She explained how to use her precious kiln she’d gotten years ago when I was just a future growing in her stomach. Her glaze was running out, but she let me use it. Then she gave me one of her hugs, the ones where love and safety sunk into my skin.

But no matter how much I practiced, how much glaze I wasted, or how many deep breaths I took, my creations never turned out like Ma's. And still, she used them, gazed at them, loved them, but not like I admired hers. Every plate, bowl, mug, every item she moulded was a part of her. Once, she only had yellow and blue glaze. I used to think of the yellow covered pottery as her happiness, and the blue as her kindness.

Her favourite were vases. They lined the window sills, crowded our table, filled space everywhere, covered in different designs that reminded me of her. Beautiful in an understated kind of way.

They were always filled with wildflowers. We picked them all around the island, replacing the wilting with fresh ones.

Ma and I lived alone together, and we were happy. Until the boat came.

It was the third day of Summer. I was collecting shells when I saw it. It didn't belong here. The birds called to each other restlessly, the kind of songs my Mother and I occasionally whistled to each other in warning, always meaning one thing. Danger. And though, this time it was the birds humming, I couldn't help feeling the meaning vibrate in my bones, shaking me.

I ran home, told Ma, watched her face pale in an unfamiliar way. She closed the doors, drew the drapes, told me the past always catches you eventually. I frowned, said we could outrun anything. Ma was indestructible.

The days grew longer, hotter. Ma became paler, quieter.

The flowers wilted. Ma threw them out but, did not replace them. The vases stayed empty, once a haven, now a carcass.

I was restless, begging to go outside. Ma said no. I'd never known her to be like that. Fear was a foreign emotion. Like the boat and whoever came on it, it didn't belong here.

Finally, Ma let me go out, told me not to venture far, to come back soon. But I was young, tired of the heat, and I missed the cool caress of the ocean. But mostly, I didn't know danger like the kind that arrived on that boat.

I was almost home when I heard the call. High-pitched, loud and unmistakable. I knew it was her because of the fear jolting through me. A terror I had never felt before.

I ran, instincts driving me. Towards her - my indestructible hero. My safety.

When I reached the house, it was suffocatingly, claustrophobically quiet.

I saw the blood first, a smear, almost unnoticeable on the window sill. But that wasn't what made everything stop. My body, my heart, my world.

It was the vases. Broken. Shattered.

And in that moment I knew, Ma and I couldn't outrun everything. The past had caught her. Ma wasn't indestructible. She was human and this... this was my breaking point.

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