Gemotions

The silence in the bookstore was deafening. Sarah stood frozen in the fiction aisle, the rejection letter clutched in her sweaty palm. Her gaze flickered over the shelves, each book a monument to someone else's success, a sharp contrast to her own perceived failure. She felt a knot forming in her stomach, twisting tighter with each passing second. She suddenly felt an overpowering need to leave, to escape the suffocating atmosphere of literary achievement that she couldn't seem to replicate. She turned and fled the store without buying anything.