Norman Belanger
Clean
Are you clean? My Grndr date asks me.
I pretend not to know what he means.
Are you disease free? He asks.
(It says on my profile “POZ”
My status is no secret
But who reads anymore?)
He’s cute, too young, his name is Kenny
When I tell him
His pretty eyes look everywhere but at me
When I tell him
He looks for an escape
He forgets we’d planned to walk along the river
To look at the newly turned leaves.
He forgets we had plans
He thanks me for the latte, leaves his raisin scone untouched
“I gotta go” he says—
And he’s gone.
He doesn’t even look back as he walks away.
It’s been too long, to feel like this
To feel what?
Dirty?
Unclean?
Diseased?
It’s been too long a road.
These young kids of now were not there then
Those early days, those terrible days
When I was his age
younger even
cuter even
When people died of the plague
When we were fags
When we Acted Up
They were not there
When Robert died, he was the first
When Joe lingered in hospice
When Everett hung on like a ghost, a shadow
They were not there
When so many died, died young,
died angry,
died scared
And we who were left behind were young,
and angry,
and scared
Back then I would have said, if I could have said:
Take care of me
Hold me
Love me…
(Can it be a generation has no idea what we went through?
Can it be that we forgot ourselves?
Can it be that we may need to act up again, be angry again?)
For now, I’m not angry
Not even sad.
Just tired.
It’s been too long a road.
to feel so alone as I go
out in the air that is cold
out into the air that is clean.
Norman Belanger is a nurse in the field of HIV care and also POZ since 1999. His work has appeared in A&U, Red Fez, Sick Lit, and Penmen Review, among other publications.
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