They went back and forth for a while. None of the students was able to confirm that Janine was not hoarding a trove of detentions, to be formed, in the distant future, into a megadetention—and there was significant argument about that strategy’s feasibility—but they were also not able to dispel the worry. One day’s detention, served on the spot: that was one thing, that was survivable. But facing a desk drawer crammed with them? That was another thing entirely.

And for Janine, the poems helped. At first they were about the students themselves, and their strange, unknowable, ridiculous choices: Why would someone choose to ruin perfectly good food? Why not spend a class period sewing a cute stuffed animal or a pair of boxer shorts instead of clowning around and breaking expensive sewing machines? Why would someone take another student’s homework and ruin it?

But then she grew bored with those questions, and her mind drifted to larger concerns. She’d always been an avid letter writer, mostly to her local newspaper. She did not for the life of her understand why a student prayer group could not pray before assemblies and football games. She questioned teaching sex ed to middle schoolers. She thought that parents should take more responsibility for their own children, instead of expecting the schools to feed them breakfast, lunch, and snack and teach them things that were once learned in church or at home. Soon she was no longer writing letters at all but drafting everything she had to say about the world in lines and stanzas.

Janine returned the folder to its place and locked the file cabinet. Her classroom had one measly window, and she could see that the storm her daughter warned her about was churning the sky with dark-gray clouds. Her students had spent the morning debating the possibility of school cancellation. Just a little bitty storm, one of them said dismissively.