Gemotions

He stared at the laptop screen, the cursor blinking mockingly on a blank page. He’d deleted it, the entire manuscript, but he still felt the words echoing in his skull. The title had been "The Observer's Gaze". The protagonist, a woman named Iris, who’d been so much like his wife, Sarah, was gone now. And the emptiness felt even more profound.

He didn't know how to fill the void, how to recover the feeling of something more than just existing. He went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee, the aroma doing nothing to fill the hollow ache. The day stretched before him, a vast, featureless plain. He couldn’t bring himself to start anything, to do anything. He just sat, staring at the cooling coffee, the silence of the empty apartment a heavy weight.