Last night I learned that a young man from around my way had died. Over the past several weeks, he has been in the hospital largely unresponsive and plainly diminished. There was hope but little. There was discussion of his illness but little. He was just. Dying.
At 28, he will join a list of young men from around my way who. Just. Died. They were all, if not explicitly, homosexual. And this is how they all died. Of some unnamed failure of the body that is always explicitly not one of the common ones: cancer, diabetes, heart disease. The Hush tells all. It is AIDS.
We never say that; we might name the failure that AIDS has authored: pneumonia, meningitis; with the proper inflection even “he was sick” works.
“That boy’s funny” was as close as we got to naming…
But he has known since he met her that the girl on the other line owns herself. Only you surprise yourself by how much. You worry when he laughs, “Just wondering.” But there is more than wondering you hear.
I’m supposed to be grading papers but I can’t stop thinking about my writing projects [Breathing Lessons especially]…and my workout (which I’m about to miss if I don’t finish my work and go to bed). But, yeah, Breathing Lessons…
I make lists. It’s what I do.
I also take unsmiling pictures of myself. Shoot me.
I write a lot more journal-y stuff than poetry. But trust me: I’m a poet.
I have the binders. A degree. The tortured soul to prove it.
But back to this thing about lists.
I often think of young women; the lessons I think we fail to teach them and how we might better serve them and our world if we did. By we, I mean women who have been there and made it (somewhat anyway) through.
What ” to do” list could we give them to get them through that decade–what could I have told told me that would’ve encouraged me beyond my doubts? Probably nothing that I would’ve believed, but here’s a list I would’ve given my 20something self anyway:
1. Chill. I was serious most of the time. But the truth…
begin/rant 1. Make no mistake: mainstream media nor the social media outlets from which we often get our "news" have not suddenly gained a conscience. The daily graphic portrayals of state violence against socioeconomic underdogs (for our purposes let's just say black men though you do know there's also been a rash of murders of [...]
Of course, I keep trying to wrap my head around Nigeria's crisis like many of us who are aware and/or care. In stark, and I feel shamefully insensitive, contrast, it made me think how the Universe conspires to protect us and give us the desires of our heart. It's a tough job. Sometimes when it [...]
1. I'm in the fourth or fifth grade. In our small town, in the 80s, this makes me old enough to walk downtown without adult supervision. Which is what me, my twin, and our sister Debbie are doing. A man in a red car drives slowly following us trying to lure us into his vehicle. [...]
darlene anita scott 