SEX OR SLEEP OR SILK

You are the night 
that is sometimes 
a highway, fields 
blurred by speed 
in which wild lives 
don't stop glowering. 
What is meant by
the word recovery? 
Aftermath is red dirt,  
red dirt, red dirt and you
are creases of crickets 
thicketing corners 
of this and every room 
I decide that I am  
safe. You are still  
below ground,  
an infinite autumn.  
I am the flaunting  
of this flesh that eats,  
fucks, bathes, waits— 
I'm done cataloguing    
loss. I'll sand glossy 
the corners of rib- 
cages that I empty,  
that empty me. I will 
spur my skin into sex
or sleep or silk.  
Your dresses still  
hang in a closet 
unworn and untouched.  
So what if I am  
phantom-bruise, torn  
tether, feral orphan?  
I'm telling you now, I 
am never going to die.

Tarfia Faizullah is a Bangladeshi-American poet. The chosen poem is from her most recent collection, Registers of Illuminated Villages, published in March 2018.