Noah Stetzer explores HIV and uncertainty in this sobering poem.
—
Exercise: write a letter to the person who infected you
This morning I reached for your name that fresh
white word, the cool wet sound of it inside
my mouth; I grasped and came up with nothing,
my mind turned over and over the same
round blank stone of something I knew I knew
but just then could not find the way to say
out loud: the word for you, that in my head
I almost had but then lost a hold of.
According to the best estimations
–and counting backwards ten years from the time
they call “final stage” puts us somewhere near
the new millennium–I think that means
that I got it from that guy at the bar
or the one, you know, that friend of a friend.
***
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