I was taking the trash to the outside dumpster the first time I saw him. It was about a month ago and he was digging in the trash. He was tall, skinny, with beautiful ebony skin and white teeth. It took me a second to connect the image that was in front of me, it didn’t fit. It seemed all wrong, like he accidentally threw away his keys or something. Like there was a deeper explanation to him digging through the trash. But there wasn’t.
On closer look, his clothes were dirty, raggedy, and he had that look. The vacant eyes, the hollow cheekbones, the chapped and cracked lips.
“Don’t dig in this dumpster,” I told him. He was opening the individual trash bags from patient’s room. Not like there was anything hazardous in them, but some patients have various infections and conditions brought on by their weakened immune system that are far more infectious than AIDS. Digging through their trash…….not such a good idea.
He didn’t say anything; he just looked at me and walked away.
The very next week when I was taking out the trash I saw him again, digging through the individual patient’s trash bags that we empty daily from their rooms. What the hell was he looking for? Drugs? Like any of our patients would throw out their meds…HA! I know he wasn’t looking for food because he was only opening the small plastic bags.
“What are you doing?” I asked him. “Don’t dig through the trash. Do you know what this house is?”
“It’s where people live that have AIDS.” He answered.
I didn’t confirm or deny that the house was an AIDS hospice. I knew that information was private and not to be given to random people digging through the trash. That’s one of the reasons the house was so nondescript, it was meant to blend into the beauty of all the old homes in the neighborhood.
“Then why the hell are you digging through the trash?” I asked.
“At least the people in there have food to eat and a place to sleep.” He said.
“But they’re dying!” I yelled.
“At least they have a place to die,” he muttered as he walked away from me.
Enough said……
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"talk less write more"
"Many ingenious lovely things are gone that seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, protected from the circle of the moon that pitches common things about." -Yeats
Self Portrait
"talk less write more"
About Me
- claudine
- Born in Haiti, raised in Los Angeles, now living in the south. Wife, mother, and writer. Attempting my first novel called The Black Converse Diary; about a girl…… Also committed to the ongoing, almost forgotten, struggle against AIDS through various organizations. Mainly, volunteering at an AIDS hospice. Trying to find my own voice among the clutter. A strong, true voice that means something.
BLOG ARCHIVE
LIST IT
- "At the end of my suffering there was a door" (27)
- All Things Me (16)
- Hospice (7)
- To The Sea (1)
- Today (1)
- Waiting (1)
- World AIDS Day (3)
The Wild Iris
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
Louise Gluck
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
Louise Gluck
THINGS I'M CRUSHING ON
- St. Aloysius
- Patches
- Apartment Story
- Cheekbones
- Padre Pio
- Louise Gluck
- Bloc Party
- Naked eyes with coat after coat after coat of black mascara
- The Bell Jar
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