Gemotions

The attic air hung thick with dust, coating Amelia's throat as she unearthed the box. It belonged to her mother, a woman gone for ten years. Inside, amongst faded photographs and forgotten trinkets, was a small, cream-colored envelope, her own handwriting scrawled across the front. The return address was her childhood home. A tremor ran through her.

She ripped it open, the paper brittle and thin. Words she'd forgotten she knew spilled out, a younger version of herself confessing to a crushing disappointment in her mother's actions. Anger, raw and potent, flared in her chest. She crumpled the letter, then smoothed it out again, her fingers tracing the familiar loops of the script.

Her breath hitched in her chest. A wave of nausea rolled over her, and she felt the blood drain from her face. She sat abruptly on a dusty trunk, the letter trembling in her hand. The words, once so fiercely felt, now seemed alien, a relic of a person she barely recognized.