AN: This is just something I wrote for my friend’s birthday, but I actually like it! I don’t own Oscar Wilde, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, or Shakespeare (though I sometimes wish I could meet him).

Anne was distraught. The reason? She had yet to think up an extremely clever gift for Bethany, despite the fact that she had instructions that no gift was necessary.

“What to do,” she mumbled to herself, ignoring the sideways glances from the people also browsing the selection at her local library.

“I have no money … and I don’t have time to knit a nifty sweater …” Anne continued to mumble to herself as she strode from her beloved library towards the car, balancing a massive pile of books. Though she slipped every other step, somehow the towering stack of readable material didn’t topple to the ground.

“Hmmm …” she hummed, freeing one hand to attempt to fish her keys out of her black hole (a.k.a. purse).

Suddenly, an idea struck her like lightning. Thankfully, Anne had already securely tucked her books away, belted into the passenger seat. She had briefly debated giving them her scarf and hat, but realized that then she would be cold, and the books were much tougher than her.

Anne picked herself up from the onslaught of the idea which had so kindly dropped from the sky. Looking down at it, Anne realized that it was a book of poetry.

“Eureka!” she shouted. “I shall write a poem!” Anne jumped joyously, only to slip as she hit the ground, sprawling once again in the newly-fallen snow.

Picking up The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, a weighty tome indeed, Anne walked carefully around the car to get into the drivers seat.

Once she had gotten home, Anne raced upstairs, books tipping precariously, to begin her labor. She needed the ambiance of her reading room; her comfy chair, the Smarties and M&M wrappers, the bike they were giving her grandpa for Christmas (it was covered by a butterfly-patterned blanket. It was cold.), and, of course, her books.

Grabbing her new notebook (purchased recently during an art class trip to the D.I.A) Anne began to think.

After a short time, she perked up and proceeded to scribble:

I can write no stately poem
As a prelude to my lay;
From a poet to a poem
I would dare to say.

For if of these fallen petals
One to you seem fair,
Love will waft it till it settles
On your hair.

And when wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden,
You will understand.

“Wait …” Anne said to herself. “That seems familiar …”

And indeed it was, for she found it, a poem by none other than Oscar Wilde.

“No!” she cried. “I thought I may have actually been becoming a great poet!”

Anne absentmindedly chewed her pen for a time, then hit upon another idea:

When you’re worried
And you can’t sleep,
Just count your blessings
Instead of sheep.
And you’ll fall asleep
Counting your blessings.

“Oh, but that’s ‘White Christmas’,” Anne sighed. She tapped her pen, now desperate for an idea. Finally, she contemplated her paper and transcribed:

O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer still we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumèd tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer’s breath their masked buds discloses;
But for their virtue only is their show
They live unwooed and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.
And so you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, by verse distills your truth.

“Crud,” Anne cried, now extremely annoyed. “That’s Shakespeare, right there!” She pointed to the offending sonnet and tried to think some more.

But it seemed that the blow from that idea had leaked all original ideas out of her head. So Anne gave up, and wrote this instead:

Happy Birthday, Bethany.
May all your dreams come true.
You’ll never know how lucky
I am because I have you.