The hearing aid was warm from his ear
when he slipped it into mine,
and what I remember isn’t the brief blazing
of his fingers along my earlobe,
but that he turned away after—
which seemed right,
since we should be alone
the first time we’re allowed
the frequency of each unheard percussion
in this world. I could have stayed
in those tingles for longer
than I’ll ever live. Hours
I’d wait standing on Congress Ave.
for the frenzy of bats
to come and unskin the horizon for us.
As a child, I understood
the dark turning I saw hanging from a ledge
in Carlsbad Caverns was love: two bats climbing
instinctively into each other, closing themselves
into a soundless, eight-chambered hymn
only they could shatter. I understand now
it takes a village of savage stalactites to show
I live for the dripping and speechless ache.
If love is learning to gnaw and be gnawed,
to be stringed and strung,
then let us be both raw instrument
& the steadfast eyes of the luthier bent in lamplight
who contours this excess away
until the melodies we forget
to echo, even in disquiet, will echo.
Tarfia Faizullah was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Bangladeshi immigrants and raised in Texas. She is the author of two poetry collections, Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf, 2018) and Seam (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014). Her writing has appeared widely in the US and abroad.
