Dreaming last night of the HIV I don't have

The cold sweat state, awake but not awake, heard the room around me, but eyes closed. The trains passing by, sunlight coming in and the birds outside. But there was a needle in my arm and a bruise spreading. Brown yellow, blood in the center. My bedspread sweated me, held me down. The birds and trains took it to the lab, only naturally at that picnic table, tracks leading yesterday where those kids played, spanish verbs pressed into the snow. The centrifuge I heard, spinning with the buzz of the window screen.

They brought it back, as I squinted and drooled on my pillow. More than once, those stains have looked like night leavings, semen of a disquiet mind, and the jokes have all been made. Unprotected sex alone. With others. The report was made loudly, confirmation in the ring of my alarm clock, and a unsettled sense that lasted all day.