Helen: Chapter Seven

I’ve been really jonesing to write some more fiction, but I am also knee-deep in a novel revise and rewrite, so I’ve made a compromise with myself: Allie’s take on flash fiction.  Each week, I will craft another 100-word chapter for Helen’s story.  Want to join us?  It’ll take less than a minute of your time. 

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Richard Gregory had always delivered his criticisms with the delicacy of a billy club. He had been Helen’s professor, and Dr. Gregory, along with his icy blue eyes, led a first year poetry seminar.  Helen savored his every word, though she never cared for poetry before.  Between recitations of Yeats and Frost and Byron, Richard, as he preferred to be called, urged his students to produce their own works. Every Thursday, Helen and her black A5 notebook marched into office hours, hoping she might hold the poem that could turn his gaze away from his file folders and onto her