Gemotions

The air clung to him, heavy and oppressive. He approached the mailbox, his steps slow and deliberate. A card, brightly colored and conspicuously out of place, waited inside. It was not his birthday.

He opened it, the paper crackling in the otherwise silent morning. Inside, a generic message wishing him well. No signature. He crumpled the card in his fist. He felt utterly and completely lost.

He spent the rest of the day staring at the wall, paralyzed by a sense of loss he couldn't name, a grief that had no form.