Free Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by Stephanie Hemphill

allow her
to see Allegra before she left.
Byron refused, so Claire
remained in Florence
instead of going to Vienna.
By the early spring,
Claire hatches a scheme
wherein we should liberate
Allegra from her cage
of the convent.
Shelley and I stand
firmly against this
as it is as foolish
as going shoeless in the snow.
Byron will certainly find out,
and with his money and power
could destroy us all.
He might even engage Shelley
in a duel over his daughter.
Claire gives up her crazy
ideas of freeing Allegra,
but fears that her daughter ails.
In April, we find out
that Allegra has died from typhus.
She is only five years old.
Teresa breaks the news
to Byron, who at first
is devastated and cannot
be moved from his chair,
but then never wishes
Allegra’s name to be mentioned
to him again.
I fear Claire’s reaction.
She overhears us discuss
the convent and guesses
that something is wrong with Allegra.
On April 30 we inform her
that her dear daughter has died.
Shelley worries Claire will
go mad from grief,
but she remains solid
as an iceberg. Of course,
we cannot see
all that floats beneath
the surface.

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    SYMPATHY
    Spring 1822
We share more than
the loss of a childhood home now,
Claire and me.
We both know
that sorrow cannot be measured
by the size of a little one’s shoe.
A part of you
buries under the earth
never to be retrieved,
a sound without an echo.
I hold my sister’s hand,
wordless,
but our grasp understands.

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    THE RETURN OF CLAIRE
    May 1822
Claire comes to Pisa
unannounced on May 21.
She becomes another
member of our group
of exiles, though
she refuses to visit Byron.
She has become calmer
than I have seen her in years,
as though in some ways
the finality of Allegra’s death
removes her from the purgatory
in which she suffered.
Shelley and Edward’s boat
arrives mid-May and they
delight in
everything about the Don Juan
except its name.
Shelley calls it Ariel .
I suffer from this pregnancy.
I fear trauma.
Claire allows me some relief
and helps with Percy.
Yet the only time I am truly
happy and feel well
is when aboard the boat Ariel
I lie down with my head
on Shelley’s knee.
There I can close my eyes
and allow the wind
and the swift motion
of the boat alone
to soothe me.
I am not sure that
I could handle
even a thimble’s worth
of grief right now.

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    MISCARRIAGE
    June 16, 1822
I hemorrhage blood
and slip in and out
of consciousness.
Jane and Claire
send for a doctor
and ice to stop
the incessant bleeding.
The ice arrives before
the doctor. No one
will say it aloud,
but I have lost so much blood
we all fear that I am going to die,
as my mother did with me.
Shelley forces me
into an ice bath
which stems the flow of blood
until the doctor arrives.
The doctor swears
Shelley saved my life.
For days I can do little more
than crawl from my bed
to the balcony I am so weak.
My dream of a new family
is dead.
There was a kicking,
a beat inside my self,
yet beyond me,
a voice that was squelched out.
And I ask only why?

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    THE HARD DAYS
    June 1822
I know there are times
when I must be difficult
to bear, when sorrow
strips away my smile
and remorse cripples my limbs.
I know I can be cold
and distant as the moon,
dependent upon and awaiting
light from another.
I close myself off
like an eyelid,
protect myself from
viewing certain horrors,
but obscure myself
from witnessing joy as well.
Still I struggle like a tree
in a tornado
to be good and rooted
for those
who love me most.

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