Survivors

by Kim Addonizio
(12/01/09) - from the archives, for World AIDS Day

He and his lover were down to their last few T-cells and arguing over who was going to die first. He wanted to be first because he did not want to have to take care of his lover's parrot or deal with his lover's family, which would descend on their flat after the funeral, especially the father who had been an Army major and had tried to beat his son's sexual orientation out of him with a belt on several occasions during adolescence; the mother, at least, would be kind but sorrowful, and secretly blame him, the survivor -- he knew this from her letters, which his lover had read to him each week for the past seven years. he knew, too, that they all -- father, mother, two older brothers -- would disapprove of their flat, of the portrait of the two of them holding hands that a friend had painted and which hung over the bed, the Gay Freedom Day poster in the bathroom, all the absurd little knickknacks like the small plastic wind-up penis that hopped around on two feet; maybe after his lover died, he would put some things away, maybe he would even take the parrot out of its cage and open the window so it could join the wild ones he'd heard of, that nested in the palm trees on Dolores Street, a whole flock of bright tropical birds apparently thriving in spite of the chilly Bay Area weather -- he would let it go fly off, and he would be completely alone then; dear God, he thought, let me die first, don't let me survive him.

©1999 by Kim Addonizio

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Kim Addonizio's fifth poetry collection, Lucifer at the Starlite, was recently published by W.W. Norton. Her collection Tell Me was a National Book Award Finalist. Addonizio has also authored two instructional books on writing poetry: The Poet's Companion (with Dorianne Laux), and Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within, both from W.W. Norton. Her first novel, Little Beauties, was published by Simon & Schuster in August 2005 and came out in paperback in July 06. Little Beauties was chosen as "Best Book of the Month" by Book of the Month Club. My Dreams Out in the Street, her second novel, was released by Simon & Schuster in 2007.

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Survivors is reprinted from In The Box Called Pleasure, by permission from Fiction Collective Two.