Letters Snippet

This is another snippet of a Dear Sir, I’m Yours prequel. I’ll be writing out several scenes over the next few weeks, alternating with more letters, and when the whole thing is done, I’ll package it all together as a pdf on the Free Reads page. For now, I’m calling this prequel “Letters” since I haven’t come up with another title. I’ll accumulate the links here in reverse chronological order if you need to catch up!

 
Snippet One
Letter One

Letter Two:
 

Dear Dr. Connagher:

 

So it should have been a clue that if you were quoting poetry…you were probably an English professor.  Which didn’t sound too bad, until I found out that your only open class is a senior-level class on the Romantic Period.  I admit, I was giddy and relieved, until I actually read the course description. 

 

Then to make matters worse, my suitemates knew somebody who took your class last year.  Thank you very much–now I’m terrified that I’ll fail my first class at Drury.  Why did your only open class have to be this one, your pet class, the one you use to “break” English majors too foolish to have changed their major to basket weaving already? 

 

What hope do I have of surviving your class?  Absolutely none whatsoever.  Yet the thought of dropping out before I even meet you makes me want to cry.

 

You can thank [name redacted to protect the innocent] for warning me that you require all students to contact you in formal letters, which is exactly why I’ve lost my mind enough to write not one but two letters to you already.  She also said that you despise the internet, and if anyone even brings up Google, e-mail, or Lord forgive us, cliffnotes.com, then we’d better get a head start for the Registrar’s Office for that withdrawal.

 

So while all my friends are out partying one last frantic weekend before having to drag themselves to class with a hangover, I’m settled into bed with a foot-thick tome of poetry, a dictionary, and every resource the librarian could suggest for a dolt who knows absolutely nothing about Shelley beyond Frankenstein.  Which I now know, thanks to you, wasn’t even written by the poet listed in the course description, but his wife.

 

I’m trying to concentrate on what I’m reading, but I keep picturing you in the hallway.  There were deep grooves about your mouth and your eyes were like dark storm clouds.  When I close my eyes, I can see your face, and I press kisses to each one of those lines until they fade away, and the only darkness that remains is in your eyes.  That darkness gives me cold chills and sends my heart pounding like a jackhammer, but I can’t look away. 

 

I want your eyes on me.  I want your darkness.  I want you.

 

Now, as I read this poem for the hundredth time, I hear your voice reading it, and I’ve never heard anything sexier in my entire life.  Just don’t ask me what the poem actually means, please, until I’ve had time to study a whole lot more.

 

Why isn’t it Monday yet?  This is so stupid.  I’ve done more work for your class than I’ve ever done in my entire life and the semester hasn’t even started!

 

Still yours,

 

~ Rae

 

P.S. Would it earn me any extra credit if you knew that I’d hunted down that snippet of poetry you quoted in the hall yesterday?

 

P.S.S. I guess not–I used Google to find out that you were quoting from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias.”