By Rowan McDowell Thompson
The red earth steams from a spring rain
and two truckers ask if I’m married.
I think of how my dinner of chicken with plantains
would be sweeter with you beside me
and answer, “no.”
Later in the hospital,
when I believed I would die,
all I could think was that no one would call you
to say I was gone.
Rowan is a sex educator and sex positive activist in Seattle, WA. She writes: “I identify as bisexual or queer. I recently traveled to Buea, Cameroon, in West Africa to teach elementary school students about HIV, Malaria and Nutrition. Homosexuality is illegal in Cameroon so for my own safety I kept my identity to myself. To make this journey I had to leave behind my lover whom I missed greatly.”