Gemotions

Rain hammered against the attic window, mirroring the dull throb in Martha's temples. Cobwebs clung to everything, casting skeletal shadows across the haphazardly stacked boxes. She’d promised herself a proper clean-out, a fresh start, but the task felt monumental. She’d been wandering through life as if underwater, everything muted and slow. Digging through a trunk, she unearthed a stack of her college correspondence. A thick, cream-colored envelope, its edges softened with age, fell open in her hands. Inside, a letter addressed to her mother, written in an angry, adolescent scrawl.

The words, penned when she was just eighteen and heartbroken, leaped off the page. "You never listen," she'd written, the sentiment sharp and familiar. Reading it now, all these years later, felt like staring into a mirror she didn't recognize. A single tear escaped, tracing a path through the dust on her cheek. She folded the letter, a strange sense of longing settling over her.