The frog prince

pierced through by her sweet words, 

bludgeoned with that sparkling smile, 

he came again and again for more, 

flogged and driven by the enchanting joy 

of hope and anticipation 

yet unfulfilled. 

how could it be 

that such fair tortures 

could burn his heart to ash, 

yet drive him onward 

full and rich and agonizing? 

Once upon a time, there was a prince. Somehow or other, he had turned into a frog. He wasn’t really sure how it had happened, or when, but he had been a frog for so long that he had become more a frog than he was a prince. But he still was a prince. He had found a princess walking beside his pond, and his response to her was certainly not that of a frog. Being a real princess, she had instantly recognized him for more than a simple frog, and had taken an interest in him at once.

But alas, the beautiful princess had a problem of her own. When she was younger and less experienced, she had kissed a toad or two. She had been brutally injured by their toxic bitter secretions. The bitterness of toad-kissing had left her cautious and wary of kissing amphibians at all.

She liked the frog prince very much, and was eager to spend time with him and affirm his princely qualities, and remind him of the courtly ways of his station in life which he had begun to forget during all the long years of mucking around in the pond. But she could not bring herself to kiss him. The experiences with the toads were too intense and painful, and still fresh in her mind and memory.

The frog prince had not been aware of the plight of the princess at first. He was content to spend time with her and learn from her and contemplate that with her help he was in the midst of a profound transformation. She shared many things with him, but he was always conscious that some dark thing lurked in her heart that she was unable or unwilling or fearful to reveal. This disturbed the frog, but being a prince, he was sensitive enough not to press. He simply waited and listened and opened his heart to her.

Slowly, the ingrained knowledge of the ways of royalty returned to him as he spent his hours and days with the princess. Slowly, carefully, she opened her heart to him as well. It was more difficult for her in some ways to do so because of the dark thing she hid. Day by day, they lingered together at the edge of the pond. Day by day, they grew closer and safer together. They learned secrets from each other, and made more secrets together. Their days at the water’s edge were wonderful. She would sit on a large flat rock on the bank, and he would hop up onto a lily pad, or onto the edge of her rock. They spent many hours there, exploring and playing and learning together, warmed by the sun.

But as time passed, the frog prince began to be restless and uneasy. He had become far more sensitive to the moods and nuances of the heart of the princess as the prince within him began to awaken and grow. He knew the time had not yet come for his transformation, and he was willing and able to wait for the proper time since, after all, he was a prince. But his heightened sensitivity made him increasingly aware of the dilemma the princess wrestled with.

She wanted to set the prince free from his frog prison, and understood that she, as a princess, was uniquely capable of doing so. But at the same time, she was not interested in kissing amphibians. She might not be able to do so at all. She had revealed many things to the emerging prince; some about herself, some about him, and some about their world. But she had not revealed the dark thing. He wondered if the dark thing was related to her experiences with the toads. He had learned enough about the practices of toads to be concerned and distressed about how they could behave in the presence of a princess. His perceptive powers were not yet well enough developed to discern the nature or origins of the dark thing, but whatever it might be, he saw that it had a subduing effect on the joy and radiance in the heart of the princess. And he suspected that she could not kiss frogs with this thing weighing upon her heart.

The prince was deeply torn and anguished by their plight. He wanted more than anything, to be a whole prince, and to be able to leave the water’s edge with the princess at will. He longed for the magic kiss. And yet he also understood the deep seated reluctance of the princess. He could not ask her for the kiss. He feared that she would not give it, or that in doing so, she would withhold herself from it in some way. He feared that in becoming a prince he could lose the princess. When he thought about this for long, he wanted to swim off and sulk and be miserable and tragic.

It seemed horrible and wrong that it could come to this. Yet he also knew that the time for frog kissing had not yet come. In the mean time, neither he nor the princess were ready to leave the water’s edge, and the boundary that it provided gave them security and stability for the work they must first do in their hearts.

—To be continued