Gemotions

The shovel bit into the earth with a hollow thud. Liam, hunched and defeated, stared at the capsule. He’d stumbled upon it while trying to make a small garden in the overgrown yard. It was a metal cylinder, gleaming faintly in the twilight. He remembered nothing of this.

He pried open the lid, revealing a collection of trinkets: a worn copy of their favorite book, a concert ticket stub, a dried-up lipstick. A photograph, creased and faded, fell out. It was a picture of him and Maya, laughing, arms around each other. The ghost of a smile briefly touched his lips, then vanished.

He closed the capsule, and slowly began to rebury it. Each shovelful felt like a weight, a new layer to the emotional canyon that had settled within him. He was a stranger to this man in the photograph, to the joy that once filled his eyes.