The Frog and the Scorpion by Lillie E. Franks

The scorpion says, “Because it is my nature
Because all I have to share is poison,
Because I am made a death-giver,
Because even my love is drowning.”

The scorpion says, “Because drowning is easy;
Because I know how to draw water into my lungs,
Like poison into a wound, like love into a heart,
But I never learned to wait on a frog’s back.”

The scorpion says, “I don’t know why.”
It does not know why it walked into the water,
Or why its stinger, which saved it from so many deaths,
Cannot save it from the rising waves.

It doesn’t matter what the scorpion says.
What matters is that sometimes we don’t know.
Sometimes we are asked more than we have.
Sometimes all we can do is sink.

The scorpion does not know its nature.
The scorpion does not know it has no nature.
All it has is time and poison and water and hope
That someday, somehow, it will come to shore.


Lillie E. Franks is a trans author and eccentric who lives in Chicago, Illinois with the best cats. You can read her work at places like Always Crashing, Poemeleon, and Drunk Monkeys or follow her on Twitter at @onyxaminedlife. She loves anything that is not the way it should be.