Ode

PrEP and Testing

Taking PrEP if you are HIVcan stop an HIV transmission. Taking PrEP if you are HIV+ can stop HIV treatment working later. Get tested for HIV before you start taking PrEP. Get tested regularly while you are taking PrEP.

Ode

I am a human vice I am a pleasure device made to be used up and spat out. Please spit me out or spit on me.

I am a gorgon I turn men’s bodies to stone and build a monument to myself from their bones. Their graveyard consists of those lecherous enough to look at me while in repose. Their names are forgotten and I wait for the day they are liberated. Please liberate me from this cavernous coffin.

I am a smoker. But I would quit smoking for you. I would harvest my organs and donate them to your scientific study of heartbreak. My life insurance policy would burn out in my fingertips for the pleasure of a kiss. Please burn me.

I am a whore of Babylon. Dejected and unrequited, but quietly My plight is heightened By the freedom I rely on. I fight for my shackles to snap under the weight of my light. Please enlighten me.

I am a marble statue Missing limbs but perfectly carved features that are unchanged by creatures of this world. I am stubborn and stoic, beautifully heroic and yet you would lock me away behind a plexiglass prison for your own vanity Please look at me.

I am a child Barely 5, and yet I pay the price of a life time I have no life line Be a little more kind

To each other, To your mother and your brother, To the artwork that you honour To your lover, tell her you love her Tell her you adore her. Make your presence known Acknowledged, Please acknowledge me.

To those who inspire me Who designed me I will not spit you out with bloodied teeth that line the inside of my biography. I will tend to your burns with my tears and lick up the remnants of the blistering pain you feel. I will sate your fears and care for you into the years. I will endure the suffering with you, and hold your pain to my chest like an iron breastplate, ready to battle your monsters, heart in hand, wielded like a weapon.