C. KUBASTA / KISS ME AS I’M BECOMING (4 TEXTS)
Of Course She Sings—When Men Tell Tales of Beautiful Women, They Make Them Sing
A man asks a woman to marry. She says “yes, but give me one day when I can be myself without you.” He says yes, but he breaks his promise.
A man asks a woman to marry. She says yes, but asks for one day to be herself without his looking, his I love you’s and You’re so beautiful’s. When he breaks his promise, everything shatters and everyone suffers.
A man asks a woman to marry. She says “yes but—”
When you tell the story, don’t forget how Melusina asks for one thing: a day or so alone. In some stories it’s a Saturday, in others a Friday. But she asks for one blissful day when her husband won’t follow her or look on her or ask her how she is.
She feels him there, looking. She smiles the saddest, knowing smile, and everything disappears.
Marriage Is Made of Small Things
When you tell her nothing happened, she nods and says: “it wasn’t any one thing, it was lots of things.” She’s the second woman you’ve told (about your age, married for about as long) who says she’s jealous, the lilt and question in her voice like she’s not sure she should say it aloud.
In “The Water Maid” the prince thinks she must be lonely in her home in the woods, no other soul but her. She’s not; she tells him so. But for some reason she says yes when he asks her to marry. For some reason he listens when another man—some stranger—says it’s not right for her to have the day and half alone.
Whatever they had, gone. It wasn’t any big thing, but she remembers how every time before she left he’d hold onto her a little longer, kisses and kisses and kisses, and so many I’ll miss you’s so that even though he held to the letter of their agreement, when she was swimming in her water, it was harder to forget the hours that were her own.
She feels him there, looking. She smiles the saddest, knowing smile, and everything disappears.
What is a small thing? She was Melusina, woman & wife, her finned self underneath and only let out once in a while. What of the girl she’d been in the forest? She was the woman who waited (because that’s how the story told it) but maybe she’d just been on her way somewhere and they crossed paths.
The aftermath story is about possible redemption. She has a key in her mouth and instructions. She tells young man after young man precisely what to do: what time and where. Kiss me when I’m beautiful. Kiss me when I’m becoming. Kiss me when I’m fully scaled.
In This Forest, or That Castle, by Those Two Rocks, There Was Once a Woman
i.
After the wedding and the wedding night
I escaped to the pool beneath the castle, shed my clothes
and the self I wore in front of you, but even there
you were with me—thin skim of husband—and I didn’t mind.
I bore you along imprinted on my skin.
I could have managed, half-fish, my stolen Saturdays, to pass my life with you—but your kind aren’t content with borrowed beauty and partial magic.
ii.
If you follow my instructions, you will be rich beyond all your dreams.
If you fail I will sink three times deeper into the earth.
If you fail you and all your descendants will die.
If you fail the city will never be redeemed.
I’ve been knitting a stitch every seven years and this is your last chance.
Look at me now: fins where my feet were—rippled scales the color of undreamed dreams. My face is like no face you’ve ever seen because this kind of beauty is unknown to your kind.
Key in my mouth, delivered only by kissing.
In the Simplest Terms, Here Is the Story
He asked her to marry. She said yes, but I will only be your wife most of the time. Some of the time, I will be myself, and you must agree to leave me alone—without looking. He agreed, and they lived happily for a period of time.
Discord arrived on the tongues of others, the questions of a stranger, some court priest, or the husband’s friend. No good wife, no real woman, would require such a promise of her husband.
And what did she do with those stolen hours on those stolen days?
She found some water (depending on the version: a bathtub, or a pond, or a pool formed in the slippery rock beneath the castle) and sunk into it, let her legs become again what they truly were. She unfurled and laid back, skin raised into scales until she was once again herself.
First, the lamellar isopedine structure, and then
the vascular layer, and finally the keratin, and after a few more hours
the slime layer came back
and each time it hurt
but not as much as it hurt
to not swim out into the river
Not as much as it hurt when she knew he was there looking. Or when she knew she would have stayed.
C. Kubasta writes poetry, fiction, and hybrid forms. Her most recent book is the short story collection Abjectification (Apprentice House, 2020) and her poetry collection Under the Tented Skin is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2025. She is the executive director at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts in Mineral Point Wisconsin. Find her at ckubasta.com and follow her at @CKubastathePoet.