His name was Celeste. We molded like wax.
It was merely a matter of vanishing;
and after, I felt the long blossom and hush
of smoke uncoiling. But then, in a whisper
of such sweetness, he told me he had HIV.
I fell through reflections and landed
before I was born. It was 1992. My mother
stood weeping over her brother. He lay
in a hospital bed dying from AIDS.
Perhaps, he was so pumped full of morphine
he couldn’t feel his necrosis; perhaps, his skin
flaked like old paint when the nurses changed his gown.
My mother only mentions him after drinking,
tells me how sarcoma mottled his face, how gauze
was shoved in his wounds to absorb the blood
that killed him. He died alone in that hospital,
she said. He was twenty-seven, body so whittled
they had a closed casket.
In my room,
an unopened condom lay on my nightstand.
I had missed a call from my mother.
Celeste had left. I sat on the edge of my bed
as night bled darker, as rain began to fall
like thousands of needles. I got up,
went to shower, watched as water trickled
down the drain, felt soap sting a fresh cut.
Blood’s Bond
Photo © Victoria Manzoli. All rights reserved.
