My Body, The Hand Grenade

Here I am, in a country where my body would have me deported. It's an interesting feeling, for many reasons. My boyfriend is struggling at the moment, understandably, with the whole issue, it frightens him and it upsets him to admit it. I'm really at a loss for how to reassure him. We both know that risk is there, that we want what we cannot have. If I say he's right to be scared, then why am I now at the point where having "it" no longer terrifies me, but if I say don't worry am I belittling his fear and being insensitive?

It aches that I am here, where my day is his night, we cannot talk except in emails and overpriced text messages, and while I walk in sunlight, he curls alone in darkness. Being so far from home, I am someone else, I cannot speak of the life I have lived, I cannot speak of the plague I carry, and that silence makes me stronger somehow, that I cannot brood upon it here, that I cannot make it a constant nagging worry because any anxiety like that means nothing. I'm not having sex while I am here, I am not planning on bleeding or sharing needles and the nights in London where the sense of this poison is very real seem so many time zones away.

Here, where my body is illegal, I can be nobody and that's worryingly reassuring.