Let’s not pretend that the funeral of the man who died of AIDS
last week in New York should be kept a secret.
They served cake at the memorial service, with one candle
stuck in the frosting for every year of his life, then blew them out
one by one to symbolize the end of that life and the beginning
of his death. I saw his ex-lover last week
on the street, holding a cardboard sign that read Half of me is missing
written in Sharpie, and his bones were like white apples,
sticking through the skin, the kind that Snow White ate
and Adam and Eve shared, the kind that is bittersweet music
to the listener, but a dirge to the recorder.
Two days ago I went to see Les Misérables in the theater,
and all I could think about when Fantine was crying,
wretched, thin, was that ex-lover’s face, and how it was
too old for a man of twenty-three, how he looked
exhausted, the kind of tiredness reserved for elderly men
and dying cancer patients right before the chemotherapy
drip is inserted, the kind that rears its head up
and whispers Half of you is not missing
because you’ve still got me.