Gemotions

"Did you find something, love?" Eleanor's husband asked. She was outside, kneeling in the overgrown rose garden. It was a place she rarely visited, a place of vibrant colour that seemed to mock her current state. She'd been aimlessly digging in the soil, her hands already caked with mud.

She held up a small, weathered wooden box. She shook her head. She had no recollection of burying it. It felt wrong, unreal.

Inside, she found a collection of seed packets, all carefully labelled with dates and names she didn't recognise. There was a small, dried flower, pressed between the pages of a small notebook. Turning the brittle pages, she read the scribbled words, words she knew were hers, but felt distant and alien. She felt an unexpected wave of despair, the knowledge of a past life, a forgotten self, washing over her. She buried the box again, feeling the soil clinging to her fingers.