This entry has been cross-posted from Brandon's Blogspot blog, My Feet Only Walk Forward, which is home to Brandon's general musings on life, the world and other matters.

Today is the day. I pick up my prescription for HIV meds. And tonight at dinner, I will take my first pill.

I have a great day planned. Brunch with Sohail, and then the Metro North to Yonkers to hang out with Peter.

With dinner, because Complera requires a meal of at least 400 calories, I will take my first pill.

This week, I received much love and support from folks I know and peeps I don't. I received an email to which I still need to respond from someone named Patrick. Patrick said, truthfully, the gift of a non-progressor is really that sometimes we can go for a week or two and not really think about being positive. For ten years, I got to do that. It was a gift....even if it was, sometimes, a lie. (Thank you, Patrick, for your sweet note.)

Until today, Patrick was right. After today. Each night at dinner time, there will be a tiny reminder of the disease with which I live. A little squatter that keeps ignoring my eviction notices.

I am gonna be alright. Actually, I am alright. Actually my life is pretty damn amazing. But I get to be a little bit sad today.

I'm not going to lie. Even when I lie to myself, I try to never lie to you all, my readers. Today, is a day I will never forget. Some people that live with HIV can tell you the day, time, and location that they received their diagnosis. I know where. I know the year, and I have a vague recollection of the month.

I will never forgot today. June 9, 2012.

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Brandon Lacy Campos is a 32-year-old queer, poz, African-American, Afro-Puerto Rican, Ojibwe and Euro (smorgasbord) poet, playwright, blogger, journalist and novelist (that last one is slowly coming along). In 2009, MyLatinoVoice.com named him the #2 queer, Latino blogger to watch. In 2006, the Star Tribune named him a young policy wonk for his political shenanigans. His writing and poetry have appeared in numerous anthologies including, most recently, Mariposas, edited by Emanuel Xavier and published by Floricanto Press. This fall, his work will appear in the academic text Queer Twin Cities, published by the University of Minnesota Press. And, one of these days, Summerfolk Press will be publishing his first solo book of poetry: It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt. Brandon is hard at work on his first novel, Eden Lost, and he lives in New York City with his partner, artist David Berube, and his boss, Mimzy Lacy Berube de Campos (their dog).

It's with heavy hearts that we share that Brandon passed away unexpectedly on Friday, Nov. 9, 2012. He was 35 years old. Read memorials by Brandon's friends and colleagues.

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