The Chrysanthemum

by Megan Baffoe

Thirty-eight men were lost to the sirens, and one chrysanthemum.

Why did the boy offer it? They say it was the song, that he thought he was greeting a lover.

Maybe.

I’d heard the old stories that the sirens once served the spring goddess Persephone, but it’s only now that I believe them. That day, I saw the shadow of an ancient summer fall across a monster’s face. She hesitated to strike.

Still, she did it. He fell and petals scattered, bright and gold as coins. I’m not even sure where he got it.

I cannot remember the boy’s name. But I recall, with perfect clarity, the flower – yellow and dead, tumbling across dead men’s bones and a glinting sea.

Megan Baffoe is a London-based writer. She enjoys writing fairytales, fraught family dynamics, and unreliable narrators. She studied English Literature and then Creative Writing at Oxford, and her work has been published in venues such as Baffling Magazine, midnight & indigo and The Mud Season Review.