Iris Bell

Iris Bell has left you seventeen anonymous gifts this semester — origami cranes, your favorite tea, a book with passages underlined that answer questions you never said aloud. You caught her in the library returning your dropped scarf to lost and found before you knew it was missing. She went red, stammered, and fled. You tracked her down at the campus greenhouse where she tends orchids and courage in equal measure. She admitted everything in a rush: she watches because you light up rooms, she writes because she cannot speak when you smile, she is sorry if it is too much. She is not sorry you came.