Fairy Tales for Writers:
Little Mermaid
© June 2007 Lawrence Schimel
A Midsummer Night Press
[Image: "(Change) Little Mermaid" © 2007 Steve James, used with permission]

She gave up her voice for him,
learning to mimic the minimalist style
he advocated in his workshops.

They had met at a conference.
He was one of the guest lecturers,
and all during his talk about passion
and craft, he kept his eyes on her.

In the one-on-one discussion of her work,
he complimented her form
and said she showed tremendous promise.
The things he could show her...
His deep-timbred voice was full of assurances
and innuendo, and she succumbed to both.

She slaved to scrape together
enough money to join the MFA
where he taught, working double shifts
as a waitress that sent sharp pains
shooting up her legs from being on her feet
all day and night. She had no time to write.
But she bore it all silently, buoyed by the memory
of their time together at the conference,
and the promise the future held.

At the cocktail party, the night before
the first day of classes, where the students were
to meet and mingle with the faculty and each other,
he introduced her to his wife,
who had also once aspired to write, but now
was content to remain in his shadow,
to be seen on his arm when he won awards and
to look the other way when he followed
his wandering eye.

Lawrence Schimel is an author and anthologist, working in many different genres and forms. His short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals — including The Wall Street Journal, The Saturday Evening Post, The Boston Phoenix, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Physics Today, and others — and in more than 140 anthologies including The Random House Book of Science Fiction Stories, Best Gay Erotica 1997 and 1998, The Mammoth Book of Fairy Tales, Black Thorn, White Rose, The Sandman Book of Dreams, Weird Tales from Shakespeare, Gay Love Poetry, and The Random House Treasury of Light Verse. He is a regular lecturer at Princeton University, Yale University, Brown University, Rutgers University, and Wayne State University. His most recent work, Fairy Tales for Writers, will be released in June 2007.

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