Tommy's Patch

(Aids memorial quilt, February 2005) I. As a native girl too, grapefruit tanned, knew the secret to Florida oranges. That the sweetest nectar, broken open piece by piece, points naturally toward the thumb tip, dips delicately across the taste buds. I am sure Tommy held them this way many times, far away from the dull blue surrounded Florida painted on his cloth tombstone. II. The heart of Texas was Bill. Not the plastered crumbled clay of the Alamo, where the dead still wandered aimlessly, gaunt faced, austere and unknowing of their long abandonment. I wondered if Bill liked ten gallon hats. If Tommy would scold him every time he put one on before planting light bird nest hands on his shoulders and pulling tight with pressed lips, telling Bill to remember Tommy, not the Alamo, so his apparitions can stalk at daylight with green tea and an orange on the thumb unabandoned in the heart of Texas.