Nineteen ninety-two
he said “I’m thinking of ending it.
Haemophiliac, poisoned with cheap blood.
HIV positive, hooked on heroin.
I’m eighteen years old.
I have no future left.”
…
I still see your mother from time to time.
Always putting on that happy smile,
but she knows me.
I was the one who talked you through it,
and she lets the smile slip.
Sometimes tears fall;
she holds my arm then,
a brief re-assurance of a kind.
…
I still feel the anger,
with this continued deceit.
He was a ten-year-old,
a mascot to the older men,
who’d taken him under their wings.
To reassure him. Telling him they were a team.
But one by one they disappeared.
And he took heroin,
to numb the pain.
His grief, his loss, the uncertainty,
it was easy.
Drugs were everywhere.
It’s the story, behind the story.
So many lives destroyed.
So many dead in so many ways.
….
So when I meet you now,
you smile and nod.
I remember the challenge
you threw.
I look at your eyes
and smile too remembering.
…
But the lies still pile,
each one on top of another,
a mountain of them still grows.
And the cover up?
of the blood scandal?
Gathers.
Continues.
…
©robcullenauthor2018
Celfypridd 