Gemotions

The concert hall buzzed with energy. Sarah, her heart pounding a joyful rhythm, smoothed the velvet of her performance gown. Her fingers, practiced and sure, had guided the bow across the violin strings countless times. Tonight, she’d be playing a concerto she'd been dreaming of for years.

The contents of her mother's storage unit lay mostly untouched, a sea of memories she hadn’t yet dared to navigate. She'd felt too fragile.

After the performance, she felt an unstoppable need to. In a box she found a mountain of her school projects. Her mother’s careful annotations on a middle school essay about her dreams made her throat constrict, in a good way. She’d always loved playing, and now she knew she hadn't been the only one.