Saffron A. Kent

“The day we met you watched the moon

While I watched you.

Tall and alone. Dark and lonely.

You looked like my mirror.

Cracked and empty.

Dried up and chewed out.

I could have been yours.

If only you had looked at me.”

My voice is scratchy, and words sound garbled and thick to my ears. I’m afraid to look up and see Thomas’ reaction. I keep dog-earing the page and shifting restlessly in my seat. Even though I’m not looking, I know the exact moment he is about to say something.

“Well, an A for the effort and courage to read it out loud. No, actually…” He scratches his jaw with his thumb. “I’d say A+ for the courage. You must have a lot of it to read something this choppy and unpolished. Tell me, Miss Robinson, how many times did you revise your work?”

I almost open my mouth and blurt out, Was I supposed to? but I control myself and manage to lie. “Once?”

“Once,” he clips.

“Uh, twice.” I hold up two fingers; they are shivering, barely able to stand on their own, so I lower them.

I can see Thomas doesn’t buy it. “It shows. The structure is choppy. It’s abrupt. And your word choice is horrendous.”

My body heats up in shame, his words hitting me like fire darts. I poured out every fucking emotion I had into this stupid poem and that’s all he has to say to me? Is he even the same person from yesterday? Is he even capable of vulnerability? Is it all in my head?

“Isn’t a poem supposed to be a snapshot of a moment?” I ask with clenched teeth.

“If I have to tell you what a poem is, I think you’re in the wrong class.”

With one flick of his gaze, he dismisses me, and I’m left seething. I feel Emma squeezing my hand on the desk and I want to snap it away and shrink in my seat. I’m happy being the weird loner. I don’t need pity.

Thomas calls out other names, asking them to read. He is impatient with his comments, snappy and rude, but not as rude or condescending as he was to me. I think by the

All day I’ve been seething over what happened in Thomas’ class, so much so that once my other classes are over, I trek back to the north side of campus and inside the Labyrinth. The building is as alive as ever. I wonder when these people even go home. It’s almost five in the evening and I can still hear the thumping footsteps above—the theatre crew. Fucking hippies.

I take the flight of stairs to the second floor, which is similar to the first floor with its long hallway and flanking rooms. A few are classrooms, but mostly this floor is for faculty offices. I stop at the last door. It sits right above our classroom downstairs and reads, Thomas Abrams, Poet in Residence. I grimace. More like asshole in residence. The door is ajar and I push it open.

Thomas is sitting in a high-backed chair, pen poised in his hands, head bent over a bundle of papers. He looks up as the door opens.

“Miss Robinson. Did we have an appointment?”

I enter and close the door behind me. “No.”

“Then you should make one and come back later.” He goes back to reading the paper in front of him.

If he doesn’t look up any time soon, I might throw something at him. By the looks of it, it’s going to be the small Tiffany lamp sitting by the door on a polished wooden stool.

“What was that?” I release a pent-up breath. “You humiliated me in class.”

For the longest time, all I hear is the scratch of his pen, and all I see is the dark hair on his bent head. My hand creeps up toward the lamp, almost touching it. I’d do it too. I’m that mad and that fearless.

At last, he is done. He sets the pen aside and looks up. “And when was that exactly?”

A laugh of disbelief breaks out of my lips. “Are you serious right now? You fucking humiliated me, tore my poem apart like it was some…some…” Dammit, I can’t find a word for it.

His fingers are laced together on the desk and with inscrutable eyes, he watches me struggle. “Like it was some what?”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I swallow the scream that itches my throat.

“No.” He stands up and walks around the desk, leaning against it. “I don’t enjoy being cornered for giving my honest opinion. Maybe you didn’t understand the first time: this is a creative writing class. If you can’t take the heat, then get out. Besides, aren’t you not in my class already?”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I bring my backpack around to my front and fish out the printed document. I walk up to him and pin it to his chest. “Here, my official registration confirmation. I am not a trespasser anymore.”