To you I am invisible.

Not even seen through the microscope of your limp

marriage. These three letters of me dance in your veins,

HIV.

It starts with a touch,

the kind of sneaking clutch in dirty bars

with sweating collar and breath that reeks of

desperation.

The blue dots you mistook for eyes,

the chiseled lines of my surface now attach to you,

the lipids you lust after are my

lifeline.

The ungloved love

we shared haunts you into rashy nightmares,

while my nanostructures molest your

molecules.

Did it hurt?

Tonight, when your wife placed the card

in your hands, the Happy Anniversary like a cold

sweat.

Our one-night stand

turned into a bond of shared DNA,

like the way you turn from me but I seek out your

cells.

Curiosity killed the

leucocytes and now the crevices of my disease

swim in your veins. My octagonal shape a lint roller for your

shame.