Frog Kissing

By Ed Higgins

All right, so the frog I risked my lips on (not to mention the contents of my stomach) when I leaned over and reluctantly planted a big smacker on those glistening lips (thank God the requirement wasn’t to French kiss the smirking little pond scum!) hasn’t turned out exactly fairytale. I’m yours, he croaked in sonorous baritone as I demurely held my hand over my open bodice, lest the little pervert leap down the front of my dress to lodge wet and writhing in my cleft. A pleasure, in any event, I was saving for the Prince. And that after the wedding, of course. Well, it seems once a cursed Prince-into-frog, it’s ribits forever, transforming kisses not withstanding. Or in my case, come every sundown he slips back into a tailless amphibian of the order Anura, leaps away from the dinner table with that moist smile of his, and it's out to the garden pond, endlessly croaking the night away on his favorite lily pad. In the morning I wake to a damp bullfrog on my pillow, wanting me to Prince him back with yet another face-sucking metamorphosis. Live with it, he tells me every morning as we later sit down to breakfast. We all have our curse to bear. Hey, you gonna pass that plate of flies?