At the AIDS Walk in My Pre-Gay Twenties
By Sandra Yannone
Years ago now I walked among the dying. I was already dead. I was a shroud of skin wrapped around bones no one could touch. This is one version of what it means to be dead. Around me, often circling, teetering like metal candelabra angels, were too plenty of the others dying, who in the moment had outlived me. Mostly middle-aged gay men dying into their shadows. We all walked for miles, for each other, for liberation, for purification, for healing, for life. The walks began and ended with swan boats in the Boston Public Garden. By the time I crossed the bridge at the finish line, under a rainbow of tethered balloons, more among me were that many steps closer to death, the air exhausted in their lungs labored further heaving, sighing, some pulsing into oxygen masks while seated in wheelchairs, escorted by lovers and friends, some who would not be permitted to witness their beloved’s final grasps for air before the lights blew out behind their eyes. But this day, sunlight. Every AIDS walk, sunlight. We would walk into the sun for miles beaming before together we would burn our skin always like flash paper ready to combust.
Sandra Yannone’s debut collection, Boats for Women, was published by Salmon Poetry (Ennistymon, Ireland) in 2019. Salmon published The Glass Studio in February, 2024. Her poetry and book reviews have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry Ireland Review, Lambda Literary Review, and numerous others. Since March, 2020, she has hosted the weekly reading series Cultivating Voices LIVE Poetry on Zoom via Facebook. Visit her at sandrayannone.com.
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I'm so intrigued by the form this poem takes. When I read it in my head all of the line breaks make me want to slow down and really take my time with each word and image. It makes me realize how fleeting and important those words and images are when you may have limited time.