Love Story

by Bob Bradshaw
The Writer's Block
Third Place, November 2017
Judged by Michael Larrain


Who knew after
the laboratory and tower

imploded that a young man
would fall in love with me?

How can I explain to him
that I am incapable

of love? I’m as split
as a harelip:

from the start my brain
and body were rivals–

my body a slow child,
refusing to be tutored,

demanding its needs
be met.

It longed to be lewdly groped,
its heart a slut’s.

I was as abhorred by its behavior
as I was by The Creature.

Even now my past
defines me: can I rise

above the graveyards
I was born in?

I long to escape
loneliness—

to be a wife, a mother–
to be more than the sum

of my parts, the way
a family is.

Yet I fear a man’s touch
as much as I do lightning.


A sad-funny variation on the Frankenstein story, the monster made female and suffering from a dreadful mind/body divide. The young man who has fallen for this unusual being had better proceed with caution. Her mood swings could decapitate her lover. --Michael Larrain