Gemotions

The first sign was a friend's text message. Then a flood of them. Each one contained the same link. Her teenage diary, scanned and posted on a blog, now a viral sensation. She stopped chopping vegetables. A knife clattered to the counter.

She didn't feel rage, or embarrassment, or even surprise. Just a kind of…emptiness. Her fingers traced the lines of her face, suddenly feeling older, weathered. She walked to the window.

The afternoon light cast long shadows across her kitchen. She looked outside, seeing the familiar scene with a detachment. Her reflection stared back, a woman who had, by some odd turn of fate, become a public figure of her past.

She glanced at her phone and at the knife on the counter. She finished preparing dinner, slowly and methodically.