"When I saw you I fell in love, you smiled"

Hi everyone,

In case you hadn’t realized this is my first attempt at writing and I would appreciate all your remarks and tips.

Thank you and enjoy your reading!

p.s. I am still looking for a beta reader and my own writing can be absolutely awfull. I need a fresh look on my work


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“Everyone, open your book at sonnet number 130, yes that means you too Mr. Wendell and if you would be so kind as to remove your cap we could all see that you have indeed been awake and that those suspicious noises were not snores!”

Kathryn sometimes hated her temporary job. Thankfully, it would just be for a few more weeks and then she would never ever do her best friend Annabelle a favor again. Her former best friend was an administrator at this school. Kathryn decided to visit her part of the country for a longer period of time to work on her book, which wasn’t working out very well and her writer’s block was getting in a stage that Kathryn would be happy if she could open a word document without cringing.
Belle was most enthusiastic and suggested that Kathryn would teach the senior class as a diversion since one of their teachers called in sick, permanently. If Kathryn wasn’t going stir crazy she wouldn’t have even thought about it but since her writing was rather, well, stuck, she needed the time away from her temporary home.
It was supposed to have been ‘a nice quite break ’and ‘those children would be learn so much.’ Well she just earned herself the first step to being called a saint and she sympathized completely with all those underpaid teachers who tried to teach these uncultured swines some refinement.

“You had to do this for homework already so does anybody have any idea on what this relationship is about?” Kathryn looked about without much hope for an answer. The silence was like space, a vacuum in which no sound was possible.

“It’s about how love isn’t about looks Ms. Benedikt.” A shy voice hesitantly offered.
Kathryn released a breath she didn’t even knew she was keeping in. ‘Finally, someone with a brain. One that actually works’

“And how did you come to this conclusion Mr.…Greely?” Kathryn couldn’t think immediately of the boy’s name but when she looked up she recognized him at once. He was a shy guy with unremarkable looks and manner but when you took a closer look you could see that there was something burning behind those brown eyes, a certain passion. Kathryn smiled at herself and knew exactly for who that passion was meant. It was all for a certain pixie like firecracker in the front of the class.


“Uhmm, in those days wasn’t the beauty ideal for a woman to be blond and he mentions something about black hair and he still loves her and such. He also says that she walks on the ground and he doesn’t put her on a pedestal” Kathryn cringed a little at his wording but he got the general idea it… sort of.


Kathryn walked back to her desk and looked over all the apt pupil writing everything down she just said. “Not!” She sighed, she had to do something different here. It wasn’t going to work.

“We’ll take it from the top. You have 2 minutes to find as many similes as you can find. Excuse me, reversed similes in this case.” Still unblinking not understanding eyes looking at here

“People, look for the insults here” Now that got a little bit more attention and she saw some eyes scanning the text more inquisitively.

“‘My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red.”

There two similes here and these are still rather tame this is saying more like ‘you’re not bad but you’re not as pretty as the sun or coral’” The next one is a bit more brutal. Look:

‘If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;’ Does anyone know what dun means?” the expected snickering following the word ’breasts’ was suspiciously absent and it looked as if they were all asleep.

Kathryn looked around and the silence was not unexpected.” Grey! It’s grey…her breasts are grey”


There were some ‘eww’s and ‘that’s disgusting’ remarks thrown around and it seemed that the class finally woke up.

A boy in the back who was lounging rather that sitting in his chair raised his hand and said:

“Did this guy really think that he would get laid this way? Insulting a girls breasts isn’t very helpful now is it?” Almost all the girls were vehemently nodding and some looked quite angry and insulted.


Kathryn smiled at this. This is what she was waiting for, some outrage and anger.
“Well let’s read on because it gets only worse.”


When they reached the end of the poem the lady in question had grey breasts, black hairs like strand of wool, pale cheeks, had a scratchy voice and trotted like an elephant. Oh, and she reeked. This last one was translated as she had bad breath and

Kathryn had a lot of trouble explaining that reeked meant something different back then. They had the same discussion a week ago when talking about the concepts ‘gay’ and ‘intercourse’. Kathryn had to snicker at the thought, it was quite amusing calling a group of young men ‘gay’ when she meant ‘happy’. The boys were almost mortally wounded in their masculinity.

The pixie like fire cracker who’s name was Trudi Sullivan, a niece of Alexander Kathryn thought, was almost ready to tear the entire poem to shreds for all the insults
‘to womankind’

“Ms. Benedikt, I can’t believe that this is a serious poem. I mean, it couldn’t have been. It seems rather stupid to give this to a girl. And expect her to fall madly in love with you.” Trudi pouted prettily and somewhere behind her Sean Greely looked captivated at the young redhead.


“This is a parody ladies and gentlemen. All these other young ‘swots’ wrote sonnets, or had them written by poor poets, and they all had the same metaphors. They are now cliché’s to us but hey were extremely popular in Shakespeare’s time.
‘As red as roses’ ‘eyes as blue as the sky’… stuff like that. Here in this sonnet Shakespeare doesn’t do that… so the first three stanzas’ can be read as a complete turnabout compared to what others do.

“He is taunting others but in the last two lines, the ‘volta’ there is a turn which gives this superficial reading of a parody more insight and meaning he says:
‘And yet, by the heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare’

“In this part he gives us the deeper meaning that he knows she isn’t a goddess but to him and that women should be compared to women and not the flowers, sky roses and such. He is against putting women on pedestals for they give false images.”

After having said this Kathryn needed desperately some coffee. ’Shit,’ she didn’t have time to get any after her encounter with Alexander. It was still unbelievable. There they were, in the right position to fuck each other and the guy decides to be noble or such. ‘Right, as if, he just wanted to torment me knowing that walking around like this would seriously piss me off. Who knew that a bit of role-playing the other nigh would lead to such a grumpy man.’ He just smiled at Kathryn stepped back and left her hanging.

Kathryn didn’t know what she would do but it definitely involved ‘The rabbit’ and she was going to use it as soon as she got back home. Sitting behind her desk Kathryn took a quick look around and sneaked a hand quickly between her legs to try and relieve some of the tension. But pressing her fingers on her clit only eased her pain a little and she couldn’t wait to get home.

“Ladies and gentlemen, for the next lesson I want you to read sonnets 20. 128 and 144… we will discuss threesomes and lies, deceit and adultery.”
Kathryn told this to the still rather enraged class and leaned back in her chair recuperating from the day.

While the classroom empties out a small voice brought Kathryn awake from her thoughts.“Ms. Benedikt, I still had a question about the last two lines.” Kathryn opened her eyes to see Sean Greely stand in front of her. ”What seems to be the problem Mr. Greely?” she said with a small smile.

“It’s like this, if a guy is in love doesn’t he want to compare the girl to a goddess? I don’t understand the first part where he disses her and I don’t see how this is a love sonnet. It doesn’t seem very romantic to me” Sean was so confused it was almost funny but Kathryn felt sorry for the boy so she tried to soften what she was about to say.

“Is this perhaps your own interpretation of love Mr. Greely? Maybe for a certain redhead?” Sean blushed heavily and Kathryn felt only a little bit guilty.

“Sean, the risk with putting a woman on a pedestal, which you are wont to do when you’re in love is that that woman will never measure up to the goddess you had in you mind. “You will be disappointed if you expect a real flesh and blood woman…girl to be that perfect ideal. Here the writer says that he know his woman Is not like a goddess and he doesn’t mind, he loves her not in spite of her imperfections but because of them”

What Kathryn said made impact but she wanted to drive her point even more across. “If you keep your distance from Miss. Sullivan like you do you will never learn the real her and you will never know if that real person is just as good or even better than the one you imagined.”

“Sean looked thoughtful and replied” I think I understand, it’s about expectations, you don’t expect the other one to be perfect because no one is, you just try to accept them for who they are.”

This was rather to “hallmark’-like for Kathryn’s taste but she nodded anyway.
‘He was rather perceptive, glad to know somebody’s paying attention’ she thought to herself when he left her classroom.

It made her think about her expectations of her fling with Alexander. She had expected him to be the aloof commitment phobic, alpha male who just wanted to fuck her six ways from Sunday… and in many ways he was but he was more. Not just this 2 dimensional idea she had in her head. Kathryn had to laugh at herself because she was just as much at a fault as Sean was with Trudi. But she didn’t put Alexander on a pedestal.. She put him on a throne with a whip in his hand while she sat at his feet.

It was time to go home. To a hot bath and an even hotter encounter with her rabbit.
With a little luck she would get some inspiration on how to deal with Alexander. Her eyes feel on a page in the book and she smiled…‘I wonder how you will like it if the Dark Lady came to visit you sometime.’ She thought to herself. It would be poetic justice irony and cosmic justice in one. ‘Then he can be my Fair Friend. Of course without the cheating and threesomes’ was her last thought as she locked up her classroom and made way to the exit.


Thank you everyone who reviewed and I am hoping that people will like this and don’t think there are too much details.

Love SF