With friends like these

By way of explanation, as this is a poem not like my usual, a "Pre-poem."

There are women.
There are friends.
This was one woman.
Quiet as a church mouse.
She saw fit to call a spade a spade.
We weren't even playing cards.
Conspiratorial whispers
are really just dull daggers
in disguise.
WWYD
What would you do
if a friend
said
sotto voice
When you walk into a room, there is no life.
You're just dead.


And now, the poem. Comments & critique welcome!


A Well-Meaning Church-Goer Lets The Wife in On a Secret: or, Husband, I Can See Your Heart Beating Through Your Shirt

There is no further need for disguise.
Husband we have been found out,
revealed for the frauds we are,
stripped naked, bones hung out
like a shop-keep’s hopeful shingle.
We are the undead.
When we walk into a room,
nothing.
Sinners and cross-wielders alike,
strangers, even,
have stared
have prayed
have seen into our sorest beating hearts,
exposed the muscle,
the raw truth. Together we are a dead man
and his mortician. One ceases to breathe.
One paints a waxy face the color of stale breath.
No beat. No pulse. No life.
And with this truth, freedom.
Free of flesh, of bloody muscle
husband, we may drop pieces
of ourselves where we walk now.
We are free. Free.
To hell with the trail we leave.
We are stepping out
of our graves, tripping
the half-light fantastic.
Almost like a first date.
I don’t know wheteher to run
hand in moldy hand
in front of a car
or send the worms
of my lips down your throat.