Gemotions

The world felt muted, like someone had turned down the volume. I watched from my kitchen window as the chain saw bit into the splintered wood, another casualty of the wind. My neighbor, Mr. Henderson, surveyed the damage with a blank expression. He’d lost his wife, Mary, to a long illness last spring. Now, this.

I felt a strange kinship with the man. I knew the weight of loss, the way it settled in your bones. He gestured at the fallen limb, a jagged tear in the once-perfect canopy. I wanted to tell him I understood, but the words caught in my throat, a thick, unwelcome lump.

The smell of sawdust drifted on the breeze. It was a smell of destruction, of endings.