Jessica
The Mermaid Loses Her Voice
Yes, was the last word she said. Seconds later,
the witch removed her tongue. This was before
she braved the witch’s dark garden, seaweed
winding around her arms. Still before she defied
her family, abandoned their crowded sandbar.
Before her months of mourning, before
her salt tears poured in to the salt sea.
Before she knew that loss and love were both
as boundless and empty as the black sea. Before
she saved her first love, pushed
his limp body toward the surface, toward the air
he could breathe. Before his ship opened
like a hungry mouth and devoured everyone
aboard. Before she saw his unconscious,
beautiful face. Before she learned
she had no soul, no hope of eternal life.
Before she knew she was trapped.
Before all this, she was just a girl
with a lovely voice and a limited life.
So, she said, yes, and watched the witch extract
her tongue from her mouth with the silver knife,
watched her tongue, that slippery fish, swim
through clouds of blood and plankton, then plop
in the burbling black potion. Yes, she had said
then mawed the water and tried to find her way home.
*****
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a poem based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”. I found the story so spooky and rich with the type of imagery I was trying to write that I committed myself to writing a series of poems based on this fairy tale.
I thought this was a pretty brilliant idea, until I tried to write the next part of the story. Silly me, I started this series with the most interesting (to me) part of the story. It was by far the easiest poem I had written in a while. The rest of the story is much more complicated. The draft above, for instance, took 3 weeks and 3 attempts to write. On the plus side, I have a draft to bring to my writers group in early March.
I’m not sure what portion of the story I’ll address next. I think I need to spend some time reading the story again and ruminating on it. Hopefully, it won’t take as long of a gestation and drafting process as this one did.
