The Virus

In Brown’s poem, the virus addresses its victim intending to remind them that they are still vulnerable to its malignant power. Medications keep the virus at bay, but it is there, invisible yet potent, threatening the person’s physical and mental wellbeing. One way in which the virus’s reminder of its lasting presence affects the person is by reminding them that on a purely biological level a human being is just a complex system of bodily organs: “I’m still here / Just beneath your skin and in / Each organ” (Lines 9-11). These organs are intricately connected but also performing their individual functions and encumbered by their individual limits and weaknesses. Since AIDS depresses the patient’s immune system, almost every organ is susceptible to opportunistic infections caused by viruses and bacteria that would be harmless in a healthy body. Before the advance of effective treatments, AIDS patients died of rare diseases that would attack their brain, lungs, kidneys, or other organs. At the point of such physical infirmity, a person’s sense of a mentally unified self is shattered as their organs fail one by one through a series of biological processes that their mind cannot control.