I’m posting this week’s poem early in (belated) honor of Flash Fiction Day! Flash Fiction was my first love, and I loved the idea of honoring this special day with a flash poem: a short story of less than a thousand words with a beginning, middle, and end.
The poem below is based on the ending of the Hans Christian Anderson story, not the Disney movie which has a different ending. At the end of Anderson’s tale, the prince marries someone else and the mermaid dies of a broken heart, but instead of turning to seafoam she becomes a spirit. This is her reward for sacrificing her happiness for his, and she is supposed to use her next three hundred years doing good deeds to earn herself a soul. I imagine her spending her time differently.
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“The Little Mermaid gets her Prince”
death had changed the little mermaid’s mind
she wouldn’t share the prince but haunt
not handsome him but his fleshly bride
become the little voice
whispering not-so-sweet nothings
in his mortal bride’s tiny perfect ears
telling her she’d never be good enough
telling her he’d be better off alone
telling her what she’d do to her if she stayed
filling her head with seaweed-scented nightmares
running his bride off into the inky blackness
on her tiny perfect feet
then the little mermaid would lie in her prince’s arms
as though he felt her there
as anything other than a cold ocean breeze
prickling the hair on his bare chest
racing his warm red blood
as she shivered him through each night
til death would they part
maybe
*
Thank you for visiting my blog. I hope you enjoyed the story and come back again!
*Image courtesy of publicdomainpictures.net via Creative Commons Universal License.
Cat Russell 