Prevention Science

Walking home from the lecture on Frankenstein
through the November mizzle, small breaths of exhaust
sighing in the twilight headlights, particles of wet air commingling.

When I look into the branches of the evergreens
I can imagine myself in Shelley’s Geneva, the still lake glittering
in the half-light. It is no surprise

to see her sitting on the bed when I go in, sixteen and pre-Creature.
At night she has sex with her future husband on
or near her mother’s grave, but for now her legs are folded

on the mattress, dark curls brushing her shoulders.
She has read philosophy, and is educated in classical antiquity. Tea?
I ask. She nods. I flick the switch on the kettle. She is unperturbed

by electricity, seems content in this urban microcosm of unwashed plates,
orange rinds and chocolate wrappers, photos of old friends and I in technicolour
— on the bus, in class, in the dresses

we wore to bid farewell to youth. Ciardi’s
High Tension Lines Across a Landscape on a poster
stuck to the wall; laptop, iPad, phone. Bible.

Psalm 21 on the wardrobe, I lift my eyes to the hills.
I take out the pump for the air mattress. Mary grins
and grabs the sleeping bag. She already knows what it is,

this tangle of purple cloth that feels like a cloud. We watch Star Wars:
Revenge of the Sith, because Mary loves sci-fi and men with
troubled designs of great futures. We caterpillar

down the hallway steps in the early hours, land in a heap
of synthetic fabric on the plastic floor. In the morning,
she has gone, crept back to the early nineteenth century in

polyester pyjamas to have sex on her mother’s grave.
I pulled Mary Shelley out of time, and still I could not save her.

Dawn Sands is an undergraduate English student at the University of Warwick. A Foyle and Tower Poet, she has also been published by Poems on the Underground, PERVERSE, and elsewhere. You can find her on Instagram @dawnllswriter.