Your Stains

A poem for a special man in my life before I became HIV positive. 

I think of all your stains on me: 

those marks that are left imprinted 
on my fingertips since the last time 
I held you. The light sheen of your kiss
Still shines upon my lips. My hand are 
Still warm from the heat of your flesh
And if I gather them both to my nose, 
I can still breathe the scent of your ocean.

Here all over my body, your breath's perfume 
Made me a Milky Way of prickles and tender spots. 
You knew so well how to call forth those 
Esoteric nebulae across the cosmos of us. 
You knew the constellations on our loins 
Were so much better and by far wiser
Than those across the night sky, as if they
Were merely inkblots in the pages of our story.

We were better off as our own gods, 
Forever heathen, forever in heat, forever in heaven 
While our mortal corpses burn with sins in hell: 
We felt more fools than the beasts inside us. 
You left me and I never tried to show you 
I never left that last moment at all.

But now as we are here once more,
There in the limbo between my face and your face,
A universe is once again unfolding. 
Are you not surprised with such intensity? 
The primordial soup of another mythology 
Is being born between you and I.

We are divinities again.

Will you finally stay like this? Will you always
Be more than those stains on my skin? 
Like tattoos, I can no longer wash them away
Even if I let all the deep-seated earthquakes out,
Or let the lava of hate singe and melt you off me.

I am like prized cattle, 
Your name is still branded on me.
And even in the dark void of my being alone,
I find myself glowing the way a dying star glows
Every time I think of us, as if to call out to you
With the most desperate sighs and murmurs.


So then, tell me either yes or no:

Will you hold me again and never let me go?
Will you be there to bear witness
When I finally come and explode?