It’s National Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day (NYHAAD), a day that amplifies how HIV/AIDS is affecting young people in the United States.
Join us as we celebrate the importance of understanding HIV/AIDS among young men and women with a poem written by Shaquille Roberts, a sophomore at the Illinois Art Institute, who won first place in the 2010 Walgreens Expressions Creative Writing Category for her poem entitled“Death at a Funeral.”
Shaquille was recently a guest at our 6th Annual Rock the RED fashion show in Chicago, sharing this piece, and we wanted to give it space on our site, too.
by Shaquille Roberts
I walked into the funeral and I saw the look of my relative’s faces. Their cheeks were stained from the tears they cried that day. I don’t like funerals because they’re sad, but I had to come to this one. Not just because it was mine, but because I just can’t let go. I walked to the front of the funeral home and looked into the casket. There I was, looking more beautiful than ever before. Being born with HIV will change your appearance in the worst way possible. There were so many years of fighting this disease and it finally caught up with me.
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There are a lot of facts people don’t know about HIV. For instance, you cannot get HIV from kissing, sneezing or just simply being in the presence of someone who has the illness. You can get it from unprotected sexual intercourse, blood contamination or, like me, you’re the offspring of someone who has HIV. I read an article once that said there is a 20 percent chance that a pregnant mother could pass HIV to her child without medication. I’m one of those unlucky ones. But another article said, without treatment, a child that has been infected lives on average for around two years. I’m part of the lucky few that lived to be 19 years old.
Now that I’m gone, who is going to teach people without HIV about the disease and persuade them to get tested? Who’s going to teach the ones coming into the world with this disease that the best way to control the disease and not let it control you is by putting on a condom before having sex and taking your medicine when you’re supposed to? Who’s going to show them how to fight this? Who’s going to help them find the strength to carry on and live life? It wasn’t my time to go. I didn’t achieve my goals and I still had work to do. I never got to tell my story. I never got to help others and influence lives.
To read the rest of Shaquille’s poem and to learn more about the Walgreens Expressions Challenge, visit the Red Pump Project.
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