The Plague That Dare Not Speak its Name.
Four decades of tomorrows past, a fearful breeze blew in a plague, a pandemic, an intimate kiss that outed those it touched through death.
You saw the numbers frail.
You saw the body count as brothers, cousins, sons;
of fathers, uncles, friends and foe alike, all coming out in failing health,
with diagnosis reluctantly revealed, exposing private lives.
The stereotypes long ridiculed and held as
‘them’, not us, swiftly dropped as every kind; every colour, creed and
embodiment of manly type. Teachers, lawyers, doctors, the mechanic and the cook,
lined up with athletes, artists and celebrities, not one exception, not one variety
unseen. Artists known and yet to make their mark: of fashion and of film, from ballet
or with brush, young and old, the powerful and poor, lining up to queue towards
an uninviting end.
All were seen for who they were, as whole, their entire lives revealed, chased by shame and reputations stained, as tightly sealed glass panes to lives were finally pried ajar, though friends and family quickly came to claim, their loved one’s inclusion a mistake, that window led to somewhere else afar.
Remember the boy, not yet a man, in gown and
metal bed, who, at twenty-one, mistakes his nurse for mother, “I knew you’d
come,” he said. But she would never come for shame and pain, and disapproval
ruled her world and outshone even son.
To the young man watching friends ahead all
leave; his future seen. He closed his door, with scared and lonely click to
lock his tragedy away, but it escaped through quality of cuts and blade. Those
who came to save a life, the holder never wanted saved, and fought against his
screams that left him free to bleed, his work unfinished and undone. Convicted,
tried and sent away for smearing, splattering, spraying his poison life on uniforms
with lack of empathy for interruption done. Fuelled by media and lynch mob-like
obsession – that lonely, desperate man spent his last days wasting in a prison.
At someone’s side, in near confusion, called to dance, marked by transfusion, a girlfriend, a wife or even newborn child, would all be vilified and shunned through ignorance towards such random chance.
The friends, who drifted quietly away, thought
of infrequently, their fate and lives imagined, unrolling alongside. The unknown
years, sometimes in decades glide, then shocked into reflection, a name in
quilted letters found, their final autograph; few words, a date; the sum of one
whole life. A flood of mournful thoughts of moments left untold, the nights of
love and laughter and particular inflexions, yet, none of this is mentioned in
that small, neat epitaph.
Those who flamed so bright within that overwhelming storm, their passing told of numbers unimagined, from every walk of life, from every nation born, and under every type of opaque veil. Their stories remain important, to speak, to remember, to mourn.
The green-eyed boy, with jet black hair, who fell unwell and came to tell at twenty-two of his return to boyhood home, to rest and mend; I never saw again.
My naïveté and nervous kiss of one so bright and
full of life who took such care not to spread his despair, but never told of
what he held within, for fear he’d never hold or love again.
At twenty-four, the call received from one so briefly known to warn I should atone and seek a clearing sheet; the fear and prayers, and frantic calls to find out what to do. My childhood doctor beaming welcome to see me fully grown who showed me quickly out his door once request for such a test was known.
Of two who rang to say farewell, their antiviral
joy no friend, the stigma and fear of drugs too dear, a system geared so lowest-ranked
lose their will and quickly disappear. They were supposed to go and never cause
a scene, behind the privacy of their closed door, a repeated drama, a million
times before – but they refused to fade, and still remain, with help, to live
and love again.
Did it really happen, with all those lives now gone?
A life that ends, to relatives and friends, it leaves a monumental cost.
When numbers grow beyond account of names, all humanity
is lost.
Today’s same crowd unmarked, as large as that before, sent back to hide by subtle held decree; a duality of roles; of dual lives with wives, captive to declare they’re free.
More easily disguised, as privilege lives bark nuanced
calls for all to fall in line with lifestyles based on prayer, sanctified in
clever nuanced words that make it clear, their good-will’s not to share.
How did so much recent suffering, revealing so
many lives that lived and loved in such a colourful array, not move us forward?
I am so tired of coming out, a thousand times already with no end in sight; on form with pen, at bank with application new, on phones with confusion first, then overly effusive apologetic nurse, administrator, manager or worse.
Those addresses matter; the he/him, she/her, the they/them of lines blurred. I’m glad you don’t get it, that’s easier for you, that your life is not so many times denied or multiplied in explanations new, but please, stop for a moment and consider how it feels to be an ‘other’, a misrepresented disrespected brother or sister, as someone misidentified.
Four decades of tomorrows past that fearful breeze, with its numbers of diversity, the regular and most unlikely, the many broken hearts torn prematurely apart, who showed so clear the numbers from homes and families, and yes, even in your sacred pews as they sought guidance despite your whispered views.
Have any yet heard the voice of faith proclaiming clear, the virtue of those who live and love with nothing to repent? They preach their words beside each fence, for in their eyes; the eyes of those of greatest faith, the fluid, non-conforming crowd are still not innocent.
How did the legacy of a missing rainbow crowd, robbed of choice to hide, have us slide back towards the shame and guilt that makes it brave to show one’s pride?
Why is bravery still needed to wake and go to work, or bravery to be yourself, or just to claim your place of those who did survive?
Today’s fresh deadly plague, a novel kiss at setting sun, has stopped the world, but that other breeze still blows, now hardly ever named.
Does anyone believe that lost fateful generation, numbering in their millions, was some mere aberration from the norm? That this ‘next’ generation or the one ahead again will any less confront convention and embrace the fluid storm?
Do you want your children safe?
Can you not recall that recent chilling page?
Where is the bravery to call a plague a plague?
Where is that last vaccine, or better yet, a cure,
brought on at pace?
Where is the research for the chronic medical
embrace?
The managed threat ignored and tamed, the silent, hiding voice of leaders meek, bowing to power, without the lack of will or bravery to speak, perchance to dream of those now managed as an endless income stream.
Some have survived, with pointed, heavy nod to
every soul that went before and led; equality remains ahead, a distant clear
horizon at the tail of one almighty fearful storm.
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