AIDS and the Muse

by Shannon Joyce Prince

Chapter 2

My soul exists, please don’t doubt that. But my body is like it’s all in pieces. And I get so scared for you, baby. Because I’m afraid that you’ll get hit by the tornado of pieces. These days, with their new versions of love it’s not the same. Now you are afraid of death.

You’d like to be immortal? What would you do with forever, man? That’s why you living people make me so sick. If you had forever you’d be too tired to stand. You are crazy, you don’t want to go on forever, you want to live an eternity in the now. You want me to make you laugh and never stop. I’d rather you kept on painting. I wanted you to have that, too. Let’s keep on making art, forever man.

Do you know what it felt like this time? It felt like I was going through the sound of a flute, or the shape of a champagne flute. And then you just found me sitting in your big Salvation Army chair with my hair flowing all down my back. And I said, “Baby, I’m Home.” I was looking down at the burgundy of your chair and those little brass studs that pierce it, and when you came I raised my head up slowly like poetry being understood.

I made a big effort to come back here. I came back, you know, to see about you. Because I care for you, boy. I always did. Don’t listen to what they say. Not all of me dies. And you’re mad because it was so long since my last visit, my last respite into the land of the living. It’s a long way back out of there.

Are you okay? I know you have to adjust whenever I step back to you. But I came. And you asked me to in some way, with no words, with no eyes, with the part of you that can reach me on the edge. Baby, I came. You didn’t know love could do that did you?

So, Baby, I’m home. Your muse is home. Oh, come on. Talk to me. Are you still not over this whole back from the dead thing? Or is it me wearing pants? Because, you know, I know I usually do the skirt stuff, but the pants matched the shirt, and I thought... What year are we in now?

Show me what you painted lately. Nothing? Boy, I’ll take my brown eyes away, I swear, if there’s not a thing for me to see here. What? I do not have an attitude. I’ve been gone a long time, baby. I’m the dead one. That’s why you have to paint. I’m not the one who lives for us, because for all of my antics, at the end of the day, you’re on a branch on the side of the tree, and I’m lying by the roots. And that tree whose trunk was donated to the Make Me a Coffin Foundation is still mad at me on the edge.

So just tell me this. You didn’t try to make contact with me once. As much as you act like you love me. You just let me stand there on the edge while every other citizen of our morbid nation got called back for some loving. You could have found some tarot cards or something...

Proceed to Chapter 3...