Gemotions

He stared at the gallery wall, his heart a lead weight in his chest. His poetry, once contained in tattered notebooks, was now printed in large, bold letters for all the world to see. It was like they had ripped out pieces of him and put them on display. He felt utterly exposed, vulnerable.

A critic, a man with a carefully sculpted beard, pointed at a line of his verse and scoffed. "Derivative," he declared with an air of superiority. He wanted to scream. He wanted to vanish.

The room seemed to shrink, closing in on him. He felt as though he couldn't breathe, each breath a struggle. His vision blurred, and the words on the wall swam before his eyes.