I ask her what she’s making,
she looks up,
says she’s making a collage for the Walk.
She’s trying to get more people involved.
Says I should come to the meetings.
I tell her I’m not so into hanging with James in my spare time.
She shrugs, says she might join ACT UP
next year, a group that’s more hard-core than GMHC.
Cut
cut
glue.
Says Mira, they’re so thin.
Whoever they are.
Africans.
Children who had blood transfusions.
Men, like Dad.
I tell her she needs a break,
pull her up,
look down
at all the photos,
so many people,
different colors
ages
races,
but all with the very same
face.
TWO CITY GIRLS
We hit the closet on our way out,
cloak ourselves in Mom’s jackets, big shoulder pads,
April in cheetah print,
me in shiny coral,
grab umbrellas, huge purses.
See Four Weddings and a Funeral,
expecting more laughs than tears,
eat peanut M&M’s,
popcorn,
drink Cherry Cokes.
We laugh until we cry
and my heart gets that stony feeling—
not knowing the death would be from AIDS.
On the walk home,
April says even if Dad lives
longer than we thought,
I’ll still be leaving.
Guilt rolls in
thick like fog.
I swallow hard,
keep in my cry,
point to purple and yellow crocuses,
poking their heads out around a
concrete-imprisoned tree.
I tell her not to worry,
she can come visit me—
and I tell her a story of
two city girls picking flowers under a starry country sky.
COUNTING TIME
WAXING CRESCENT MOON, 7 DAYS LEFT
Friends chant in the hallway:
count down the days,
the hours,
till prom,
graduation.
My clock counts time by T cells,
which seem to be holding for now:
dancing needles,
crystals around his neck,
the smell of sage hanging
in the apartment air.
I count time by platelets
and Dad is at 5,000—
only one-thirtieth the amount
of a healthy person.
Do I dare
at 5,000 platelets
with no date
pick out a dress?
Do I dare
look to the future?
rush across the sun?
gallop past the moon?
OPEN STAR CLUSTERS
FIRST QUARTER MOON, 2 DAYS LEFT
My Astronomy textbook says
open clusters of stars
are easier to study
than isolated stars
because they are almost
the same age
and have almost the same
chemical composition.
Scientists
get to know stars better
when they live in these clusters
than when they live
out
isolated
alone.
Then they are hard to study,
hard to tell
when they fade or glow.
I come out of my room,
to find April.
She’s drawing flyers for the AIDS Walk.
I sit down with her, ask her, please, if I can help.
She says sure, hands me white paper and a black pen.
I write in
black
bold:
FIGHT AIDS. WALK TALL.
Line my poster with
clusters of stars.
MORNING STAR
WAXING GIBBOUS MOON
day
0
wake up
hardly slept, my palms scattered with crescent
marks from my nails dug in, he’s
awake, alive, i grin and
kiss him on his
cheek on the way
to school april
and i
walk
hopeful
together.
SIP SWEET SIPS
Come straight home after school,
Dad’s showered and dressed.
I ask him, sun bright,
if he’d like to take a walk with me.
A new coffee shop just opened,
Starbucks, does he want to try it.
We walk, slowly, hand in hand,
to 87th and Broadway.
We get things called Venti Frappuccinos,
which sound ridiculous but taste delicious—
and I don’t think about
who sees or doesn’t see
his AIDS face.
I just sip sweet sips.
Dad talks about all the big businesses
taking over Manhattan:
Tower Records,
Banana Republic.
How we’re living
in a changing city.
Then he says, smiling,
sun blasting through the windows,
and I’m alive to see it.
OVERLAPPING LIVES
April heads downtown
with James
to stuff envelopes for a GMHC mailing.
This time, I don’t ask to join,
just tell her I’m coming, bring Dylan.
On a crowded 9 train,
we hang on to silver poles,
where so many fingerprints
have already left their mark.
Think about how many places
these people are going,
wonder how many to the
same street,
same building,
how many lives
are constantly overlapping.
Wonder if flutters of hope
(like mine)
can pass
from person to person
without so much
as a touch or
glance.
INSIDE OUR SELVES
I.
The Gay Men’s Health Crisis sign
waves proudly in the breeze.
The mailing’s in full swing.
Keith Haring posters everywhere,
men and women
talking over each other,
snacks and drinks.
Reminds me of a Yearbook meeting
except April, Dylan and I
are the only teenagers.
I wonder if any of these people
have children of their own.
I’m in charge of sticking address labels
on postcards.
I lay them out alphabetically,
pull them off delicately,
careful not to rip.
April licks the stamps.
Dylan stacks the postcards in messy piles,
shoos me away
when I start straightening them,
laughs, says don’t even think
of micromanaging me.
April smiles.
II.
James knows everyone here.
Like he’s in charge,
keeping things organized,
pouring Coke,
sneaking April extra Doritos.
Dylan talks about his cousin,
now suffering with pneumonia.
James shows us proofs
for new safe sex ads
for the buses and subways, asks
for our “youthful opinion.”
As if James is so old?
April tells me James is here
almost all the time
when he’s not teaching,
playing music,
caring for Dad.
I think about how our lives don’t just overlap
with other people’s, but how
inside each person
we are
so many selves
all at once.
MOVING THE AIR
In Peer Mentorship,
we discuss safe sex.
Condoms, pamphlets.
Mr. R introduces the topic,
then steps into the hall.
Two Freshmen blow condom balloons,
toss them back and forth.
Girls laugh.
Heat swells inside me.
I erupt:
My dad’s dying from AIDS.
It’s not just happening in Africa.
Condoms aren’t a joke.
You need to be safe.
Their mouths hang open.
I’m sure they’ve heard the rumors
but it is different
to hear the truth spoken directly.
The condom balloons whiz to the ground.
And even though the windows are closed,
and the fans are turned off,
the air feels like it’s moving.
THE BLANKET OF THE MOON
SOLAR ECLIPSE, MAY 10, 1994
Mr. Lamb leads us out
to watch the sky,
clutching our pinpricked cardboard
for the solar eclipse.
We herd across the street.
As the sky grows dark,
Dylan asks me—in a whisper—
if I want to go to prom with him.
I smile as
the always-lit New York City
goes dark for a bit
of day.
Moon and sun,
the same for the moment.
Together, light and dark, they make something
more beautiful than when alone:
A moon with sun’s rays.
A sun the color of moon.
And then I tell Dylan
I’ll go to prom with him
if he’ll do something in return:
march alongside
me and my family
in the AIDS Walk.
For Dad, for his cousin.
I thought you’d never ask,
Dylan says, smiling,
hugging me,
just as the sun reemerges
from behind
the blanket of the moon.
FLYING
April and I walk
from school
to street corner
to store,
passing out
flyers
for the AIDS Walk.
We curve through the crowded blocks,
shoulder to shoulder,
stream through the streets.
Carol at the Starlight Diner
lets us put a stack
on the windowsill.
Chloe puts some up
in her own neighborhood.
The movie theater won’t take the flyers.
Celestial Treasures does, of course.
Others fly away
in the early May winds.
The last place we hit
is Adam’s lobby.
Put some in an envelope,
label it 11C.
I might never hear from Adam again,
so he might never know:
when he pushed me out
I floated
into the black
and found there
the light of my family and true friends.
And like a real North Star
it guided me home.
OUR OWN SKY RAINBOW
AIDS WALK, MAY 22, 1994
I.
On the way there
April chatters about the history
of the Walk:
it started in 1984,
San Francisco,
there are Walks everywhere now,
even in Kansas,
she says.
I listen,
wonder what it will feel like,
marching with so many people
affected,
infected,
by this disease,
wonder if anyone’s story
is just like our own.
April and I meet up with Dylan,
join James, register walkers.
Hordes of people swarm
Central Park
with their papers.
A teenage girl, just my height,
comes to the table, pushing
a man in a wheelchair,
face and neck spotted with lesions.
Says she and her dad are here to register.
Her father looks much worse off than mine.
I wonder if she knows about astragalus,
pineapple juice, protein shots.
Wonder if she has anyone else to help
with her dying father.
Hand her the papers,
thank her for coming,
tell her it should be a great day.
She smiles weakly—
says we need one of those.
Next:
two men,
a couple,
One flirts with James,
says the volunteers are getting better and better looking.
James laughs, gives them their papers.
One rests his head on the other’s shoulder.
Says he’s already tired, the other says
they’ll walk and rest.
Rest and walk.
They move on.
Some members of ACT UP
approach us with their own flyers,
I recognize the slogan:
SILENCE = DEATH.
For the first time
I think I know what this means.
How silence
breeds secrecy, shame.
How I hurt myself
being silent.
How silence can ruin
lives.
April and James speak Spanish
with an older woman,
who says she’s here to march for
her son, who’s in the hospital.
Chloe arrives,
wearing layers of rainbow clothes.
Birds tweet in trees,
the sun sits high in the sky,
masses of people ready to march,
spilling out
into the streets,
red ribbons on display,
they begin to cheer,
wave rainbow flags.
I look around and wonder how
I ever could have
thought myself
alone.
II.
We meet Mom
,
who’s pushing Dad
in a wheelchair of his own.
Waving a small flag.
We burst onto Central Park West,
turquoise sky sloping between
one building and the next,
walking north,
up, up,
we all take turns pushing Dad.
The sky splinters and darkens.
Volunteers pass out ponchos, Gatorade.
Mom puts Dad’s hat on.
James grabs him a drink.
As we walk,
I see that girl again
with her father,
and I notice
another man with them now,
and a woman.
Flanking them.
She looks at me,
and sort of waves.
I sort of wave back.
Two families
in reflection.
III.
On Riverside,
past our own apartment building,
rain threatens but then
the sky settles back
into baby blue.
James shouting, Fight back! Fight AIDS!
We join in.
Dylan and Chloe compete
to see who can yell the loudest.
There’s no rainbow in the sky
but I wave my flag high.
April grins,
holding her crystal necklace
into the sun,
where it splashes
its own tiny rainbow
onto my arm.
SUMMER
FIREWORKS
Last quarter moon,
Dad still hanging on.
Forty-two days longer than they said he would.
Can he make it longer still?
To graduation?
Beyond?
Open my Astro textbook,
search for an answer,
stare at photo after photo of nebulas.
They may only be gas shells
produced by dying stars—
a star’s last wish—
but they look like
fireworks,
red, purple clouds
of hope—
a yes
suspended
in a wide-open
sky.
WATCH IT FLY
Yearbook’s out.
Grab Chloe, to the stairwell,
flip through it together.
The front page quote, my idea, still reads:
When we look to the stars
we are looking back in time . . .
Cliques sit in star clusters,
faculty fly in rocket ships,
whole grades in constellations.
I’m not listed as editor,