𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘴 ೃ⁀➷ 𝘴. 𝘮𝘦𝘦𝘬𝘴

𝑹𝑰𝑷, 𝑹𝑰𝑷, 𝑹𝑰𝑷!

"Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, we fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness."

The second day of classes at Welton Academy were nothing short of dreadfully slow.

Iris had been rudely awaken by a somewhat hysterical Charlie Dalton banging his fist onto her dorm's wooden door. Groaning, she trudged across the room, not thinking to change her clothing beforehand. This resulted in 7 red-faced, all to excited teenage boys shutting their mouths so quickly their jaws hurt. Rubbing her eyes, Iris had opened the door enough for her friends to see her in a shirt just long enough to cover her upper thighs, which caused quite the stir. Charlie and Knox just stared while Steven and Pitts took to covering her body and pushing the rest of the boys away, respectively. Neil and Todd were shocked, turning around on their heels as soon as possible. Cameron looked almost disgusted and muttered about 'how little self respect Iris had'.

It was safe to say the rest of her day wasn't exactly heading up hill, either. Charlie half-heartedly apologized for the unexpected visit, the other six boys following suit. Steven was especially remorseful of the mishap, and had taken it upon himself to bring Iris an extra handful of strawberries from the breakfast table.

Iris was embarrassed; this resulted in her only making small conversation with Meeks and Edward. That was until she walked into Mr. Keating's classroom, of course. It seemed that all of her worries melted away once the sole of her Oxfords clacked onto the hardwood. Students quickly filed down the isles, sitting at their assigned chairs. Iris smiled softly, her knee bounced up and down, faster, faster, faster, until she stopped the movement abruptly. Steven's hand laid carefully on her lower thigh, a sweet comfort the girl needed. His hand was warm, and it set off a wave of butterflies throughout her body. The ginger smiled reassuringly, giving her leg one last, small squeeze, and turned around to face the professor.

The girl felt her face heat up, rosy redness flowing up into her cheeks and nose. She couldn't suppress a smile, the ghost of his hand still casting weight on her skin. Todd, an observant boy, caught her eye and shot her a small smile, his eyes flickering downwards onto his desk. Iris's eyes followed. Todd nudged a note forward on the table so she could see it better. 'I'm sorry, Iris', it read. Nodding her head, Iris mouthed a stealthy 'It's ok, I promise' to her friend.

Mr. Keating cleared his throat loudly, gaining every student's attention. "Alright, lady, gentlemen, open your text to page twenty-one of the introduction. Mr. Perry, will you read the opening paragraph of the preface entitled 'Understanding Poetry'?" Flipping the yellowed pages, the ones that were old and soiled by people scanning them time and time again, the class read the ink title of page number 21.

"'Understanding Poetry,' by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D. To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme and figures of speech, then ask two questions: one, how artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered, and two, how important is that objective? Question 1 rates the poem's perfection; question 2 rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining the poem's greatness becomes a relatively simple matter." Mr. Keating stood up, walking up to the black board behind his desk. Gripping a piece of white chalk, he drew two lines.

"If the poem's score for perfection is plotted on the horizontal of a graph and its importance is plotted on the vertical," Neil continued, "then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness." The 'graph' that had been drawn now had a large 'P' on it's X axis and an 'I' on the Y axis. Iris and Charlie shared a quizzical look, while Knox furrowed his eyebrows. Cameron pulled a ruler out of his book stack and began tracing a copy of what was on the board. This was no way to enjoy literature.