Perspectives and personal stories from young people living with HIV/AIDS

Jacqulyn Whang of Youth Speaks performed and co-created the poem "Sunlight Found You” with Sergio Mendoza. The poem reflects the true and intimate reflections of Sergio, a youth participant from Beyond the Odds. The poem performed was created in collaboration with Youth Speaks and Beyond the Odds.

Sunlight Found You

Sunlight split the blinds
Window frames box out the world from you
Reality versus a dream
Mom cries at night.
Reoccurring dreams
Sleeping herself into your reality
A baby in the hospital each wake
Between her blinks

Her baby boy
Lying on tacky printed carpet.
Cramp hotel room
Cold sweat dripping down face
vices and immortality
Orange thongs and Calvin Klein bikini.

Outside a freeway collapses
April 
F$#@
Sunlight through the smoke
Emeryville is no place for Calvin Klein bikini and blue thongs
Close the door
Store the shame

The stench of chaos
The stench of stale life standing in a room
Separated from the outside

part by Lover and family

dual reality
split between the walls of the hotel room and outside
double life catches up and falls with the highway
falls into chromosomes
forever stigmatized Sida

burning bridges
you sit alone in hotel room
waiting in underwear for a lovers revival
waiting for the smokes to get you

bridges outside are falling
knocking into the pavement
gravity takes down the chunks of cement
time takes down momentum

maybe it was the HIV living in lover
or maybe it was the awakening

purging down the mirror so sick wit repulsion.
Stripping Sergio

Medication cocktails on a daily
Sergio you are a beauty every morning
The sunlight found you in Emeryville
In the dark corners
Lying on shaggy patterned carpets

Sunlight found u
Through the dense smoke
Through Meth
Through false lovers
Through secrets of 5 am shift

The sunlight
Made its way
To hit your flesh
raw
at this angle
only the angels can tell
of what you choose to hold

The freeway collapsed to get your attention
All of the bay felt the secrets stashed between the folds of your chest.

The pill drips slowly down throat
Swallow shame
Swallow Sergio
Down

and
You smile

Stashing HIV positive resin
Behind each teeth

Your secrets find place
On the surface of your taste buds
Anticipating release

smile
For mom

Each pill
Daily dose of awakening
Of what you are holding..

The burden
Of pasts gets dark
Behind bars
In dark prison cells
Psyche
Shocked in numb waves
Of pink pills
And cold sweats

Sergio.
Tests scores and statistics
Are not enough to
shadow past the sun that fell through the blinds
In Emeryville
the hotel room may have been still
but inside.

Written by Jacqulyn Whang of Youth Speaks