Sleeping-in Beauty
Today’s prompt was to write about a mythical creature/animal doing ‘ordinary’ things.
And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem about a mythical person or creature doing something unusual – or at least something that seems unusual in relation to that person/creature. For example, what does Hercules do when he loses a sock in the dryer? If a mermaid wants to pick up rock-climbing as a hobby, how does she do that? What happens when a mountain troll makes pancakes?
For this poem, I tried to imagine Sleeping Beauty as older, separated, and as doing something unusual - sleeping. Unusual in the sense that she was supposedly ‘freed’ from her sleeping curse. But, what if ’true love’ is not enough to really free us from whatever it is that makes us not want to wake up in the mornings?
She spent her fortieth birthday alone.
It's fine. It was an opportunity
to reflect on all the ways she'd grown.
All the ways she was better off
without him.
He had left because...why had he left again?
She slept too much, he said
She didn't look at him as a man
He had saved her after all
be grateful.
So what, if she still liked to sleep till noon?
She preferred the nighttime wakefulness,
The wine, the books, and the moon.
She could be alone, far away
from his nagging.
Maybe she should have put more effort in
Tried to listen, to empathize
She knew he loved her, it had been written
True loves kiss had
awakened her.
Or, perhaps he had only loved her in his way
Perhaps that witches curse was still at work
Maybe the right guy would arrive, any day
And break the spell
And wake her up.
She still slept a lot, after all.
Sometimes past noon.