Love can not fill the thickening blood with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Author's Notes for Love Alone:

Normally, I wouldn't do this, but I feel as if the inspiration for this series deserves some explanation.  The vignettes that follow are all inspired by the poetry of Paul Monette.  All epigraphs are taken from Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog, which was written in the months following the death of his lover of twelve years from AIDS in 1986.  Paul Monette himself died in 1995.

Herein lie some vague references to things found in much of Monette's writing (here I shall plug Borrowed Time and Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story).  Also within are some of my own ideas (I did write it, yo).  Please remember that I've shamelessly romanticized his work and attributed it to the characters of RENT.  AIDS isn't pretty.  Love Alone is not pretty.  It's angry and frustrated and painful and rightfully so.  It's about death and disease and surviving in the face of both, even when you don't want to.

I apologize to Mr. Monette, who just might be spinning in his grave right now, but that's what he gets for writing achingly beautiful poetry about a man named Roger.

Disclaimer: If you haven't figured this out already, the poetry isn't mine.  Oh, and neither are Mark and Roger and the others.  Let's hope Jonathon Larson isn't rolling in his grave, too, because I have guilt enough as it is.

PS: Though they're short, I'm going to post these one by one, so each vignette can stand alone.  There are eighteen total, and they're already completed, so it shouldn't be long till it's all up.  So without further distraction, go to!  Enjoy!

~Annie