Duke Brandon's office was darker than usual at 10:43 p.m.
The single desk lamp cast a narrow pool of amber light across the walnut surface, leaving the rest of the room in soft, swallowing shadows. Bookshelves loomed like silent witnesses. The window blinds were half-closed, letting thin silver lines of moonlight slice across the floorboards. Rain had stopped hours ago, but the air still carried that damp, heavy scent of aftermath.
He sat alone.
The stack of submitted close readings waited in front of him, neatly aligned, each one labeled with a student's name in careful print. Sixty papers. Sixty attempts at understanding fragmentation, at touching the jagged edges of modernist despair without bleeding on the page.
He had saved Norman's for last.
Not on purpose.
At least, that was what he told himself when he first sat down at 7:00 p.m.
But now, with the campus outside gone quiet and the rest of the submissions already marked with red ink and terse comments, the single remaining file stared back at him like a dare.
He opened it.
The title appeared on the screen: Prufrock – Final.
No MLA header.
No Works Cited.
Single-spaced, ragged margins.
Duke's jaw tightened.
He began to read.
The first paragraph was careful, almost textbook. Safe.
Then the tone shifted.
By the second page, the voice changed.
It became raw.
Personal.
Desperate.
Duke felt the shift in his chest like a door creaking open.
He read about the yellow fog rubbing itself against the window-panes, about the women talking of Michelangelo, about arms braceleted and white.
He read about the speaker's terror of being known, of being pinned, of daring to disturb the universe when every instinct screamed to remain unseen.
And then the words stopped pretending to be about Eliot.
They became about a boy who had walked into a lecture hall three days ago and never left.
Duke's breathing grew shallow.
He reached the passage about the overwhelming question that is never asked aloud.
About the fear that to let someone see the trembling thing beneath the surface is to invite ruin.
About the perfume that lingers, the perfume that is never yours to claim.
He stopped.
He read the line again.
Do I dare let someone know that beneath the careful composure there is only a trembling thing that wants to be touched, even if it means being broken?
His hand lifted slowly, almost against his will, and pressed against his own chest.
His heart was beating too fast.
Too loud.
Too alive.
He continued.
The final paragraph was short.
It ended with a single sentence:
The speaker never finds the courage to eat the peach.
But maybe the courage is in asking anyway.
In daring to disturb.
In saying, without saying:
I see you.
I want you to see me.
I'm not afraid of the fracture lines anymore.
Duke stared at the screen.
The cursor blinked at the end of the document.
He did not blink.
Minutes passed.
The office clock ticked softly.
He scrolled back to the beginning.
Read it again.
Slower.
Every word.
When he reached the end a second time, he closed his eyes.
He leaned back in the chair.
He exhaled, long and ragged.
The paper was not an assignment.
It was a letter.
It was a confession written in the only language Duke had ever trusted: literature.
And it was addressed to him.
He opened his eyes.
He looked at the name at the top of the file: Norman Reed.
He whispered the name aloud, tasting it in the dark.
"Norman."
The sound of it in his own voice was devastating.
He stood.
He paced the narrow space behind the desk.
Three steps.
Turn.
Three steps back.
He stopped at the window.
Looked out at the empty quad, the wet cobblestones shining under the lamplight.
Somewhere out there, in one of the dorms, a boy was probably lying awake, heart pounding, waiting for judgment.
Waiting for rejection.
Waiting for anything except silence.
Duke returned to the desk.
He opened the grading rubric.
He stared at the categories: Thesis, Analysis, Use of Evidence, Style, Mechanics.
He could not apply any of them.
Because this was not an essay.
This was a wound laid bare.
He closed the rubric.
He opened a new comment box at the end of the document.
His fingers hovered over the keys.
He typed one word.
Beautiful.
He deleted it.
He typed again.
You should not have done this.
He deleted that too.
He stared at the blinking cursor.
Then he typed, slowly, deliberately:
Your reading of Prufrock is raw, honest, and devastating.
You have let the text hurt.
You have let it show.
This is the most courageous piece of writing I have received in years.
He paused.
His throat felt tight.
He continued.
However, the assignment required MLA formatting, double-spacing, and a Works Cited page.
Technical requirements were not met.
For that reason, I must assign a grade of Incomplete.
He stopped.
He read what he had written.
It felt like cowardice.
He deleted the entire comment.
He started over.
This time he wrote only one sentence.
Come to office hours tomorrow.
We need to discuss this.
He saved the comment.
He attached a grade: Incomplete.
He closed the document.
He closed the laptop.
He sat in the dark for a long time.
His hands shook.
He pressed them flat against the desk to stop the tremor.
He thought about the boy who had written those words.
About the courage it must have taken to send them.
About the terror he must be feeling right now, waiting for a response that might never come.
Duke stood again.
He walked to the bookshelf.
He pulled down a worn copy of Prufrock and Other Observations.
He opened it to the poem.
He read the last lines aloud, voice barely above a whisper.
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
He closed the book.
He pressed it to his chest.
He closed his eyes.
And in the absolute silence of the office, with only the moon for witness, he admitted the truth he had been fighting since the first day.
"I'm drowning too."
He did not know if he would send the comment back.
He did not know if he would keep the Incomplete.
He did not know how to stop the pull that was dragging him under.
But he knew one thing with terrible certainty.
Tomorrow, he would see Norman Reed again.
And when he did, there would be no more pretending.
The door between them had been opened.
And neither of them could close it now.