Gemotions

The air in the gallery felt heavy, the vibrant paintings on the walls somehow diminished in their brilliance. He stood alone in a corner, nursing a glass of wine. He, a struggling painter, had always felt a kinship with his favorite author, a sense of shared artistic struggle. The news was particularly bitter because he understood, intimately, the effort and the emotional investment in creating something.

He swirled the wine in the glass, the liquid reflecting the dim lights of the gallery. He felt a visceral anger, directed not at the author, but at the injustice of it all. He felt a profound sense of loss, not just for the artistic world he’d believed in, but also in the world’s seeming indifference to honesty.