Disclaimer: Don't own anything related to X-Men or Kenneth Koch's I never told anyone poem.
A/N: Thanks to the people who reviewed, and thanks to Lee Tea for being such a cool beta-reader! By the way, I'm sorry if this chapter isn't funny…(I actually don't intend to make it funny… but it might happen due to the use of some stupid jokes). Humor and this author don't get along too well…(sorry if this is kind of short)
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Monday night
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I decided not to go to dinner that night as I had about forty different assignments to mark. Why couldn't Jean have taught a different class? I wouldn't have minded teaching defense class to a bunch of doe-eyed kids in the danger room. Jean and Scott's wedding had definitely not been one of the more joyful times of my life, but I guess I had to move on sometime. I only accepted the offer to teach Jean's class because Jean asked me to, so I guess that means I still feel something for her, and also because the other option was that I would take care of their child, which I declined right away.
I absentmindedly picked up the assignment on top of the mountainous pile and got to work. I glanced at the name written at the top of the assignment, Kitty Pryde.
"I never told Piotr Rasputin I had a huge crush on him
Or that I stare at him during class all the time …" I groaned. This was going to be a very long evening. I got through almost all of the I never told anyone poems when I finally got to Rogue's, which was the only one left. I hesitated; did I really want to read this? After all, she had one of the darkest pasts I had ever heard of, and there was probably someone else living beneath that perpetual smile of hers. I sighed; I had to read it. It was my duty as a teacher to mark assignments, not judge people by them.
"I never told anyone about many things,
And because they were things I never told anyone,
They're secrets, like something you keep.
Here's when you laugh over bright, pink, vinyl curtains.
Here's when you cry over crazy canaries.
Here's when you stop reading my fucking poem," I was
absolutely horrified. This was one piece of bullshit. I knew Rogue wrote
wonderful poetry; Jean used to brag to me about her best students all the time.
I knew she deserved more than a D on a poetry assignment like this. I put her
assignment aside and grabbed the pile of ballades I had to mark next. These
were the type of poems I preferred; they were graphic, and the themes were
excellent: unrequited love, a lot of blood and gore, doom and gloom… and the
like. I got through this pile in less than half an hour.
Jean came into the room and asked me how I was doing. I told her I was doing
all right, and that her students were bizarre. I asked her about Rogue and
showed her the poem Rogue had written. Jean looked at me funny and told me that
if I had second thoughts on anything maybe I should ask Rogue myself. She also
told me that the poem was perfectly legitimate because it used all the writing
conventions they had discussed in class. She crossed out the D I had
written and put an A+ on it. She leafed through the rest of the assignments I
had marked and shook her head.
"Logan, you mark too hard. They're students, not writing machines," she informed me.
"I thought we were training them for university, college and the like," I replied
"Well, the way you're marking them, maybe they won't even make it past grade twelve," she countered.
"Alright then, I'm going to start again. Do you…uhh… by any chance have any beer?" I asked her. She looked at me, raised her eyebrow and walked out of the room. Ah fuck! I crossed out all of the marks I had given the papers and started all over again. Back to square one.