Gemotions

The letter arrived in the morning mail. A formal notice. A coroner’s report. The details were clinical, dispassionate: a death, a location, a house. His house. He closed his eyes, the image of the letter imprinted on the inside of his eyelids. He'd spent months painting, sanding, rebuilding. He'd sought a haven.

He went to the garden, the one he had tried so hard to cultivate. The roses he’d planted, their stems still fragile, seemed to droop. He clipped a single rose and held it between his fingers. It was a pretty thing, fleeting. He sighed. What else was there?