Gemotions

The attic was stifling, smelling of mothballs and forgotten memories. Sarah, however, felt a current of levity ripple through her. She had been dreading the clean-up, the emotional labor of sorting through her father’s things after his passing. Then she'd found the letter.

It was a draft, penned on stationary with the company logo he'd worked for for decades. It was a formal, stilted resignation, detailing his reasons for leaving. She started to read it, but the words felt heavy, the formality too much. She decided to rewrite it.

Grabbing a bright pink marker, she began annotating the letter. She added exclamation points after every sentence, drew goofy faces next to his serious pronouncements, and scribbled nonsensical asides in the margins. "He finally realized he was a rock star!" she wrote in big, bubbly letters. She was glad no one was there to witness her, so she could just be.