Valid Weaknesses ||Completed|| #Wattys2017

Chapter 26

Genesis

I tap Elliot's shoulder to keep him from doing something regrettable. In the week that I've been here, I've discovered how much he values his sister Jessica and his friend Valerie.

Turning towards the latter I take a deep breath. "You do not worry." I say, barely preventing the smile forcing itself onto my face. "I'll fly away."

That said I walk away from their table, holding my head high as I walk out the back doors of the cafeteria. Just as I head to an empty table, I remember my promise.

Like a real on a video projector, it plays over and over again in my head.

I promised.

A wave of guilt washes over me when I call to mind my earlier entanglement with Valerie. All I'd wanted to do was sit down with Elliot and his sister because they had been nice to me during a shared history class in which I'd had to work with him.

I decided I couldn't keep up with Holden and his friends during lunch anymore.

I gotta admit, I was taken aback by Valerie's reaction and I'm not saying she didn't deserve my answer because she probably did but I made a promise to myself and to God that I would show love to whomever comes my way whether they deserve it or not.

"May we?" a voice asks, pulling me straight out of my thoughts. It's Elliot and Jessica and their faces both mirror uncertainty.

"Sure." I reply, trying to sound reassuring.

"Look Gen-

"It's okay." I cut him off smiling. "I shouldn't have showed up at your table like that anyway."

"No." Jessica replies. "You should have and you have every right to be mad right now."

"But I won't." I say, shrugging. "What good would that do? I forgive her."

"Thank you." Elliot says softly.

"Is she okay though?" I ask. "I mean, I didn't want to say anything but I did find her sobbing in the bathroom sometime during the week."

Elliot's voice becomes even softer. "Yeah, she's okay." He relies. "She's just got a couple of things going."

The bell goes just then and I make a mental list of stuff I need to get from my locker.

"Oh okay." I say, getting up. "I hope she gets it all sorted out. Will you please help me tell her I forgive her?"

"Sure thing." He says, smiling.

"You're a good person Genesis." Jessica adds, sounding very much like a wizened old lady.

"Please." I smile. "Call me Gen."

She nods then, walking off with her brother while I head to my locker to get ready for my next two classes.

I spot Valerie during English and smile at her but she turns away.

Oh well.

"Good afternoon class." Our teacher greets, extending his hands in a welcome gesture. "Today. We'll be looking at one of Emily Dickinson's poems titled, 'A bird came down.'"

"Emily Dickinson is one of America's greatest and most original poets of all time. She experimented with expression in order to free it from conventional restraints." He immediately began handing out papers as he speaks, his voice rising and falling with each step.

"The speakers in Dickinson's poetry, like those in Brontë's and Browning's works, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes."

Not even the slightest bit interested in his dull monologue, I take a glance at the piece of paper sitting on my desk.

A Bird, came down the Walk -

He did not know I saw -

He bit an Angle Worm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw,

And then, he drank a Dew

From a convenient Grass -

And then hopped sidewise to the Wall

To let a Beetle pass -

He glanced with rapid eyes,

That hurried all abroad -

They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,

He stirred his Velvet Head. -

Like one in danger, Cautious,

I offered him a Crumb,

And he unrolled his feathers,

And rowed him softer Home -

Than Oars divide the Ocean,

Too silver for a seam,

Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon,

Leap, plashless as they swim.

Mr. Delaney then reads the poem out loud, in his deep rich voice before sitting at his desk and informing us that we have to go through it for ourselves and begin our review.

Great.

I read through it twice more, trying to figure out the rhyme scheme, meaning of words and whatnot. Mr. Delaney is supposed to help us with this but he isn't which sucks because that would have made it all easier.

It takes a while but I finally figure out what to write.

"Structurally the Poet uses iambic trimeter with occasional four-syllable lines, following a loose ABCB rhyme scheme, and rhythmically breaking up the meter with long dashes.

Dickinson keenly depicts the bird as it eats a worm, pecks at the grass, hops by a beetle, and glances around fearfully.

As a natural creature frightened by the speaker into flying away, the bird becomes an emblem for the quick, lively, ungraspable wild essence that distances nature from the human beings who desire to appropriate or tame it. But the most remarkable feature of this poem is the imagery of its final stanza, in which Dickinson provides one of the most breath-taking descriptions of flying in all of poetry."

Reading through my work once more, I smile, satisfied.

This is my forte