Aubade Ending with the Death of a Mosquito
        —at Apollo Hospital, Dhaka

Let me break
                        free of these lace-frail
                        lilac fingers disrobing
the black sky
                        from the windows of this
                        room, I sit helpless, waiting,
silent—sister,
                        because you drew from me
                        the coil of red twine: loneliness—
spooled inside—
                        once, I wanted to say one
                        true thing, as in, I want more
in this life,
                        or, the sky is hurt, a blue vessel—
                        we pass through each other,
like weary
                        sweepers haunting through glass
                        doors, arcing across gray floors
faint trails
                        of dust we leave behind—he
                        touches my hand, waits for me
to clutch back
                        while mosquitoes rise like smoke
                        from this cold marble floor,
from altars,
                        seeking the blood still humming
                        in our unsaved bodies—he sighs,
I make a fist,
                        I kill this one leaving raw
                        kisses raised on our bare necks—
because I woke
                        alone in the myth of one life, I will
                        myself into another—how strange,
to witness
                        nameless, the tangled shape
                        our blood makes across us,
my open palm.

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Copyright © 2014 Tarfia Faizullah All rights reserved
from Seam
Southern Illinois University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission