‘Risky gay sex then,’ she said as she wrote on the anonymous file.

The tears that blurred my vision and forced me into a lay-by on Llandegla Moors betrayed the first conscious realisation that I’d been hurt by the everyday language of the clinic: risky gay sex was an abridged version of all that I’d shared with Joel.

Routine carried me for seven days. The doctor was solemn when she confirmed the positive result of the blood test, and Ali, the Glaswegian nurse held my hand for some time; he was very tender. Somewhere, inside white blood cells, deep within the tissues of my body, there was a piece of biochemical grammar that had the potential to write a sentence in my genes, an instruction that would bring on cell death. The virus, coursing through my blood, waited for tomorrow. As it had done in Joel, tomorrow or some other tomorrow, it would cause my body’s immune system to fail.

High above the village I made for the waters of Cregennen and the solitude that the mountains offered. I yearned for a quietness of mind, but a patchwork of thoughts had been woven in the hours since I’d been told, and my emotions lurched chaotically. Anxiety… confusion… joy… despair. The beauty and quiet of the mountain lake, shimmering in the early morning sunlight, were not infectious, and the thought looms continued to weave. I sought to grasp at the joy that my choice of celibacy now brought. The certainty that the virus, which lay dormant, had infected no one since my return from San Francisco.

‘This is the Bread of Life,’ Dafydd said, standing before me and placing the wafer on my out-stretched palm. It stuck to my tongue. Somewhere, in a distant cavern of my mind, I heard the echoes of my own prayers over the elements, on the one Sunday in the month that my tradition allowed. ‘One Bread, One Body, One Lord of All, One Cup of blessing which we bless.’ Anxiety and confusion gripped me as the wine dislodged the wafer from my tongue….

‘This is the Blood of Christ.’

Joel came to me, offering comfort. I reached for the warmth of his touch. But the solace of his presence dissolved into the sorrowful words of Cheryl’s letter, describing the cancer and dementia that had killed him. I swallowed, knowing that through my Communion, the Body of Christ would become infected. And with a pain that paralysed, the thought looms wove into the fabric of my being the first of many malignancies. Joel, too, had been blighted by my love.

Food For Thoughts

Food For Thoughts