My poem, “She gave me COVID on our first date”, is out now on DC Pride Poems.
This poem is pretty self-explanatory 😂. And it’s a true story! No fiction, embellishment, or poetic license in this piece — my partner truly did pass the coronavirus to me during our first date. If that couldn’t keep us apart, nothing can.
I’m thrilled to have another poem appear in this amazing project, which Kim Roberts Meikle and Jon Gann have been running for five years — quite an achievement. DC Pride Poems features queer poets from Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Every day in June, in celebration of Pride Month, the project releases a recording of a poet reading their poem.
Read the full text of my poem below:
She gave me COVID on our first date swore it was just allergies as she sniffled in the passenger seat on the way to Urban Roast. I offered to drive, put her apartment in Google Maps — it was only a block away. We sat outside by a fire pit, even though winter wasn’t quite through. The wind picked up, but the fire stayed lit, blazing in her blue eyes. We talked about normal first date topics — how we came out, our trauma, if we want kids. Before the night ended, we were sharing ideas for a second date. As we said bye in my car, I didn’t kiss her, knew I’d see her again, felt like there was no rush, no one’s timeline but our own. And a 14-day quarantine after she tested positive for COVID, then the two stripes appeared on my rapid test. I couldn’t walk without getting winded, put hot sauce on my food just for some sensation, slept for 16 hours and was still exhausted. She got better quicker than me, like she always does, her enviable immune system (other than those very real allergies), tried to plan our next date while I couldn’t taste, a snotty mess surrounded by a mountain of tissues in bed, flailing feverishly. When I finally recovered, after 16 days, the dates never stopped. I think she did it on purpose, infected me so no one else could ever date me. Three years later, she slept on a cot by my bedside while I recovered from a hip replacement, somehow still sweet to me at my grumpiest. And I returned the favor by giving her the norovirus, holding back my future wife’s hair while she threw up in our new bathroom, in the house we bought together.
DC Pride Poems is produced through a grant from the Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and also made possible with special promotional partner The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center.
You should check back all month to read and/or watch the incredible poems and poets being published.
Some of my fellow 2026 Pride Poets-in-Residence cohort also have poems being published by DC Pride Poems! See Nico Penaranda read “Finding the Right Words” and Angelique Palmer read “Dumb Inheritance”.
Pride Month Poetry Reading at the Arts Club of Washington
Mark your calendar for June 16 for the Pride Month poetry reading at the Arts Club of Washington. The five LGBTQ+ poets in the 2026 Pride Poets-in-Residence cohort — Gregory Adams, Xochi Quetzali Cartland, Angelique Palmer, Nico Penaranda, and yours truly — will be sharing the poems we’ve been working on together this year. And there will be an open mic for the community as well.
Hope you’ll come out to support and share your own writing!
Happy Pride, y’all. At a time when healthcare is being restricted, especially for women and trans folks, and with the rising wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, may we continue to expand our rights and create a present where anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, bullying, and discrimination is no more.
