Gemotions

He stared at the crumpled paper, a hand clamped over his mouth to stifle a strangled sound. "Visit every national park," his father’s messy scrawl read. His stomach lurched, a sensation of being yanked down a very long chute. The house seemed to shrink around him, the familiar rooms transforming into a cage. He needed air.

Each sentence felt like a punch. *“Learn to play the ukulele."* Did he even know how to play the ukulele? He’d always assumed his father, a man of routine and comfort, would have preferred a game of chess. The sheer foreignness of it all overwhelmed him.

He dropped the list onto the table, the paper fluttering to the ground. A sudden urge to run, to vanish into the anonymous embrace of the street, seized him. *“Speak a new language.”* He felt his pulse hammering against his ribs, a frantic rhythm. He wanted to scream.