My Neighbor’s Breath

December 2020

It has always been a gift

to connect with our lips

exchanging our warm, damp souls

through inhale and exhale, the first thing

we ever did and the last we will do

And now it will be the death of us, literally,

three hundred thousand and counting

opening their bare mouths

and then shutting their eyes for good.

Who would have thought it would take us down—

men, for once, afraid of women who wear

their masks too low—

not of slumped teens fingering car door locks

or broken men sleeping on the sidewalk by Kelly’s Liquor

or the greasy guy who collect our cans

smelling like piss and cigarettes.

The ones we have been taught to fear look no more

dangerous than my sweet neighbor today

raking out front with her geriatric dog

her hello condensing in the cold morning air.

Turns out we’re not islands after all,

my neighbor’s lips a weapon

that could wipe out my whole archipelago.

I turn back home to hide my body away,

to dance behind windows

to the symphony of sirens

All of us dance, like it or not

The great robe of liberation wide open

The delusion lifting like mist