Gemotions

"They took it," Mara whispered, the words barely audible. Her play, her story, her heart, now credited to a stranger. She pictured the production, the lights, the applause she had dreamt of. A strange hollowness began to fill her.

She knew very little about the other playwright, except that they had a name that suggested a much older woman. She had been there before, trying to publish her work. She imagined the loneliness, the hunger for recognition.

Mara ran a hand through her hair, a knot forming in her stomach. She opened the script, and started to read the words aloud, not to feel the pain, but in some kind of way to remember the feeling of what it was supposed to feel like. She knew she would write again.