Ali’s giggles and smiles, dark hair and flirtatious thick lashes, whisked her into the arms of lust, lies, and cruelty. Caviar, Cristal, maybelline, and L’Oréal, couldn’t save her. She put her life on the line for us. Yvonne’s words of heritage and culture, black text of mixed musings and lady poetry, couldn’t save her. Love intertwined lust, fulfilling the heart but choking the mind from clear and cohesive thoughts. She put her life on the line for us.
A separate fight for women. A separate stereotype, a separate prejudice. A separate blame game. Should’ve did this. Why didn’t she do that? Ever been in love? In love so hard it blinded you into madness? Ever experienced something so traumatizing, you needed IV medicine to forget it? Too much of a good thing can kill you. Literally. Silently. Invading your body, taking over your soul. A parasite sucking into you until it becomes one with you.
We were warned in the early 90s by Elizabeth Glasser that women’s lives were in danger. We were warned by black women in bamboo earrings, Gloria Vanderbilt jeans on size 8, modelesque bodies, cute Toni Braxton hair cuts with wet n wild lipstick cherry colored lips, that a virus had no particular look and it damn sure didn’t have a preference.
We were told in the ’00s by a young, beautiful, black, athletic, teenage girl in the prime of her life, that a virus didn’t give a fuck if you were an innocent bystander, preparing for college on a track scholarship, and never even thought about having sex before. Before the tall, dark, and handsome entity that invaded her space unwillingly.
I was in the clinic crying desperately.. Out to God to please save me from my own foolishness. Wrap your arms around me and save me from my own demise. “God, I know you ain’t gon let me go out like that”? When that lady told me “negative”, the breath I’d been holding for two weeks released from me. Tears flowed… Endlessly.
Women. Saving women. By dying to save women. Dying to warn women.
Lady Interrupted 