Gemotions

The spare bedroom felt less like a haven and more like a museum. His mother had preserved it in amber, the same Star Wars posters, the same worn-out armchair. It was as if he’d never left.

She’d left his old trophies on the shelf. “Aren’t they lovely?” she would say, and smile.

He hadn’t won a trophy since high school, the distant, forgotten past. He felt like his accomplishments in the intervening years, the whole of his adult life, were invisible. Every morning, he woke up with a quiet, unshakeable rage.