Gemotions

The house was dark, the curtains drawn against the persistent grayness of the day. Emily stared at the list, a tear tracing a path down her cheek. "Visit the Great Barrier Reef," it said, in her mother's looping script. She hadn't even known her mother wanted to go there.

A sense of lethargy washed over her. She felt like she was trapped in a perpetual state of quiet mourning, and the world seemed to hold no appeal. She sank into a chair, the room closing in around her, each object a painful reminder of what she had lost.