Positive

This piece is inspired by a documentary I watched some years ago, filmed in southern Africa. A nurse who was also the aunt of an HIV positive orphan girl said a phrase which stayed with me, "When she's older she'll understand."

Positive

Why am I positive?

The little girl’s question

hung in the morning

Naked and still

like a black and white memory

Preserved forever by a rush of light

Against the grainy surface

of a photographic plate

And the elders looked one at the other,

Searching for letters to spell disaster

“When you’re a little older, “

they said to her

“When you’re a little older,

you’ll understand.”

But it was the elders

Who could not comprehend

How ‘positive’ became a Basuto word,

A Bapeti word

A Xhosa word without the clicks

Which nature bestowed

On moist pink tongues

So many years ago

She would not stop,

she wanted to know

Why Grandfather’s smile

showed so many holes

Each gap left by the passing of souls

Between life and death

Between air and earth

Informal transcendences

of one form to the next

The old man answered with a lisp

"Your face is as bright as a slice of the moon

Your laughter melodious as a marimba tune"

Then he lost the smile

As it wavered and thinned

Far short of the corners of tear charged eyes

Why am I positive? The little girl read

One finger tracing the border of words

From left to right

From eye to tongue

And the pupils heard the teacher’s reply

“You run and play and study hard

Sometimes you’re first

In quizzes and tests

You’re young and curious,

The brightest and best

You always do your homework first"

The teacher summoned mist from the hills

Watched it settle over the playing-field

And there observed the funeral of the future

In rhythm games and nursery rhymes

Why is she positive? The village asks

Her mother lies all day upon a mat

Beneath a mango tree in the yard

Her father escaped the other day

Resting in the shade of the same old tree

It was her aunt, the nurse, the giver of pills

Who said she was positive by the shade of her blood

“When you’re little older”, she said to her

“You’ll understand what it means to be positive.”