Gemotions

She sat on the floor, surrounded by a swirling sea of paper. The harsh fluorescent light of the storage room seemed to amplify the silence. Each rustle, each turn of a page, was a whisper from the past. Her mother’s meticulous handwriting – a now-familiar script – stared back at her from every essay, every spelling test.

A wave of heat rose in her chest. She reached for a crumpled worksheet, a multiplication table with her shaky handwriting and circled errors. She was terrible at math. Remembering the frustration, the stinging shame, was immediate.

She picked up a handwritten letter, penned in her elementary school script. A simple 'I love you, Mom,' scrawled across the bottom of a book report. A tear, unbidden, rolled down her cheek, landing on the ink, making it bloom.