Remembering A Loss On World AIDS Day

It’s taken 12 years to write this. Every time World AIDS Day looms I think about it. I think about it the rest of the time, too. 2005 unleashed the most calamitous experience of my life (and that’s comparing it to falling 40 feet and breaking my back in 2012). I’d never seen a lifeless body before and there he was, Miguel, the one I loved, with a startled expression, mouth ajar, one arm raised as if readying itself to clutch at the last traces of life. I held his unyielding han