“

i

you

we met

first sight, love

you, too unaware

but me, head over heels for you

an , yes, professional lines, yes, but still i

daily, weekly, you are always on my mind. your eyes your voice your intellect. let’s date.

-y”

Touched as Irene was, she still found herself shaking her head after reading the cute math-themed love poem. It came tucked in a pretty pink envelope, slipped under her office door. As one of only a handful of young female doctoral students in the mathematics department, receiving confessions of love wasn’t uncommon for her. But this one, this confession, she could tell it wasn’t written by one of her usual admirers. This one, from the handwriting, she knew without a doubt it was one of the students she tutored in the evenings at the university’s student center. Irene breathed a strangely content sigh and tucked the poem back into its pretty pink envelope. She knew the rules but her heart and mind still couldn’t help but wonder, what if. With a chuckle, she places the envelope into her desk drawer and goes back to working on her dissertation.

A/N: The pattern lies in the number of syllables per line.