In Life My Co-Worker Says She Bought Her Forever Home
We are on the street
and the noise of morning traffic
is drowning each other out,
so it takes me a minute to understand
what she means by “forever home.”
Four plots purchased over the weekend:
one for her, one for her sister, and two for her parents.
This phrase calls into question
the meaning of “forever” and “home.”
Neither are guarantees.
But that’s not a correct response to someone
telling you they’ve just spent money on their own death.
So I nod and smile as if we are talking about a new apartment.
She says she just assumed she’d get cremated
and thrown somewhere. Anywhere, I don’t really care.
But her father is more traditional.
Doesn’t like the idea of ashes in the air.
Or thrown on 5th Ave, she says with a laugh.
He wants somewhere more permanent.
Somewhere safe.
Land here in New York is nearly gone.
Maybe that’s why we keep inventing new stories
about the dead rising—coming back again and again.
But never the same.
We are never the same.
She doesn’t ask about my forever home
for I am twenty years younger.
Not that it really matters.
Death is a great equalizer.
Later we arrive at our outreach event in Chinatown.
I am there to do HIV testing.
She is there to translate.
We do this monthly.
Here stigma thrives.
Some want to use the back entrance
for fear of people seeing them.
Many give us fake names.
Fake birth dates.
Fake phone numbers.
One man visits the “massage parlors” regularly
but says he only picks “the clean ones.”
Another man worries over blowjobs.
Only blowjobs, he says in English
looking directly at me.
A woman knows her husband is unfaithful—
maybe with men—wants to get tested
but is unsure what to do with the results.
Another comes every six months.
Her husband is positive.
She tells my co-worker he got it in a barbershop.
She believes this story.
Has to believe this story.
Afterwards it’s back into the street
and then to lunch at a spot my co-worker likes
because they give you free chicken feet
and today they’re also giving everyone
two dollars in a red envelope
for the Chinese New Year.
So we buy lottery tickets together.
Her suggestion.
She tells me it’s lucky money.
We sign the backs. Just in case we lose them.
She takes them home.
Promises we will split the winnings.
In a few days, I get a text:
We lost. Maybe next time.
Stephen S. Mills (he/him/his) is the author of the Lambda Award-winning book, He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices (2012), as well as A History of the Unmarried (2014) and Not Everything Thrown Starts a Revolution (2018), all from Sibling Rivalry Press. His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Columbia Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, The New York Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, and others. He is on the faculty of the low-residency MFA program at Goddard College. He lives in New York City with his partner and two schnauzers.
