John Findura
Portrait: News Broadcast, 1985, w/Me Shaking
I was ten the first time I heard
About AIDS and how there was
No cure and how if you
Had it you were going to die
And my ten year-old self
Was sure that I would then
Get this disease because the news
Broadcasts don’t lie and there
I was shaking that I was going
To get an incurable disease
At ten years-old and die obviously
Not understanding anything about
What it really was only that it
Was a death sentence for everyone
And it was going to spread through
The country by blood and this sounded
So bad so horrible that I shook
Myself to sleep that night
But now I think not of how silly
I was because I wasn’t silly at all
I was scared and sure but now
At forty I am more frustrated
That it has been thirty years
And there is a ten year-old somewhere
Who is just as scared as I was
Because there is still no cure
And there are still people dying
And sometimes it seems as if
The most that I can do is write
A poem saying that it’s okay
To be young and scared because
When there are this many of us
You don’t have to be alone
John Findura is the author of the poetry collection Submerged (ELJ, 2018). He holds an MFA from The New School as well as a degree in psychotherapy. His poetry and criticism appear in numerous journals including Verse, Fourteen Hills, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, Forklift, Ohio, Sixth Finch, Prelude, and Rain Taxi. A guest blogger for The Best American Poetry, he lives in Northern New Jersey with his wife and daughters.