Soteria Thomas
Stories (1/0)
An Unnameable Emotion
Somewhere between the confusion and the foreign ache in my chest, there were tears. They fell from my eyes, bulbous drops that stained the last yellowed page of the book in my hands. I sat cross-legged in the middle of my childhood bed, hinged at the waist and working to keep my cries muffled. The ache I felt bloomed within my ribcage, expanding further and further with each ragged gasp I took until it suffused me; there was warmth in its unfamiliarity, even as I still reeled with shock. I remember reading the final chapter of Beloved several times, desperate for understanding, desperate for anything my eight-year-old mind could grasp with surety. But all I found were tears. My younger sister came looking and when she discovered me there on the bed, sobbing into the book I’d been carrying around for weeks, she demanded to know what was wrong. When I couldn’t answer her, she ran for our mom, who would ask the same question. I lifted my head to them, my eyelids weighted with tears and a soft smile on my face, and whispered, “It’s just so beautiful.”
By Soteria Thomas4 years ago in Geeks