what if we kissed on mary wollstonecraft’s grave
just to see what might move.
not in a gross way. in a mother-of-feminism way.
maybe she’d hum through the soil when our teeth click,
maybe she’d bless us for wanting too much.

mary shelley did it first.
her mother’s plot, her lover’s mouth.
the original inheritance, a library of want.
she kept percy’s heart after he drowned.
dried it, boxed it, wrote beside it.
that’s devotion. that’s archival work.

if we did, i’d bring tarot cards, a bic lighter,
a vindication folded to the good parts.
you’d ask, is this a date or performance art?
i’d say, depends who’s watching.

maybe we’d hear her whisper,
yes, like that.
and the ground would tremble
with the sound of a thousand skirts
tearing open
so the women underneath could run.

Holly Coleman is an English instructor and PhD student who studies British Romanticism and the ways language performs erotically and insurgently. Her work appears in Passages North, Full Stop, On The Rag, and elsewhere. Find her @hollycaroline.

𝓌𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒾𝒻 𝓌𝑒 𝓀𝒾𝓈𝓈𝑒𝒹 𝑜𝓃 𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔶 𝔴𝔬𝔩𝔩𝔰𝔱𝔬𝔫𝔢𝔠𝔯𝔞𝔣𝔱'𝔰 𝑔𝓇𝒶𝓋𝑒