mouth to ear

There are two types of people in the world –
the duped and the non-duped.
I used to consider myself non-duped until
you blew my world wide open, a car bomb
in a crowded city street. Words traveled
mouth to ear, mouth to ear, mouth to ear.

I wondered if I was killed in the explosion
because I had to close my eyes when you stared at
me. I thought if I never looked at you I would never
see myself (I covered all the mirrors in my house.)
You were all the sounds in the night that I heard when
I was alone not quite awake but not quite sleeping.

“How do you know if a tree that falls
in the middle of a forest makes any sound?”

Sometimes I thought you were next to me
eye to eye while I was lying on my side in my
bed sick with fever. The corners of our
starved red mouths were electric with desire
or conversation but you can’t kiss anyone when
they’re coughing up their heart and lungs.

It was a hell of a lucid dream because
I could’ve sworn you were solid and
your outline rumpled my sheets but
I am the duped after all.

I’m the priest shot dead in the street
there’s no faith in the rosary and
I don’t get down on my knees
to pray.

I stare at the sky through the cracked
ceilings of bedrooms that aren’t my own
and I don’t think about God. I wonder when
the Earth will stand still on its axis and when
the duped will all be pulled down by their ankles
through the mulch and into the fires.