Gemotions

He glared at the glossy magazine. There, on page 47, beneath a photo of a student who looked remarkably like him, sat his words. His essay. The one he’d labored over, agonized over, and ultimately submitted with a mixture of hope and utter terror. Now it was public. He resisted the urge to rip the magazine in half. This was supposed to be a good thing, a validation, a chance for his work to be admired. But a knot of resistance twisted in his gut. The editor’s notes were already irritating him. He envisioned all the things they could have changed. He wanted them to feel the way he had felt when he wrote it. He took a deep breath. He would not read it. Not yet. Maybe never.