It’s a delicate issue in fairytales, this one. Sometimes a prince gets an urge to kiss a dead chick, and then she comes to life. In the traditional stories, we just…accept this. In modern retellings, it can’t really be ignored. I kinda like the prince. I didn’t want to write him as a creepy necrophiliac. I mean, imagine his disappointment when she woke up!
So I figured he just had a hunch she was actually alive, but was a bit freaked out by his own urge to kiss a girl at her own funeral.
Black hair, red lips and skin as white as snow.
She almost looks as though she were alive,
Encased within her coffin made of glass.
I watch as seven mourners weep and kiss
And comfort one another at her funeral
And in my throat, quite suddenly, I taste
The tang of my own tears. This is a taste
Of tragedy played out on melting snow
I did not think to come upon a funeral
A forest hunt makes me feel more alive.
I’d left my kingdom to avoid the kiss-
Es of a duchess, cold and clear as glass
Who loves to view her beauty in the glass
Who spends her time discussing the new taste
In gowns. I hate the way she tries to kiss
Me, stake her claim. She’s cold as snow.
This pale, dead, girl looks ten times more alive.
I should not think of romance at a funeral.
But I approach, and interrupt the funeral
To view the sleeping maiden through the glass
Surely she sleeps! Surely she is alive!
The seven shake their heads. Say “she has taste
-ed poisoned apples, deadly as the snow
Those crimson lips will neither smile nor kiss
Again.” I plead with them: “oh let me kiss
Her blushing lips!” They scowl. This is her funeral.
I’ve shocked myself. For surely there is no
Excuse. I’ve smashed decorum like a glass.
My strange request is in the poorest taste.
But I can’t shake my hunch that she’s alive.
They glare at me. “How can she be alive,
When death has given her his final
kiss?
An apple seller tempted her to taste
The fruit that sealed the date for this, her funeral
She does not breathe, we’d see it on the glass.
Her breast lies still and silent as the snow.”
To hell with taste! I know that she’s alive!
I throw the coffin to the snow and kiss
Her at her funeral, and she wakes to breaking glass.
Tom Juniper Poetry 
In most old versions of the tale, the prince doesn’t kiss her but carts away her coffin, which upsets on the way, dislodging a piece of the apple caught in her throat, upon which she revives.
LikeLike