Structural Integrity

by Joyce Nancy

Wherever
you are I am reaching
towards it
aching
& devastated  
by the hit of your consonants
the singular architecture
of your syntax.
 
You are cultivating universes
from off-handed remarks
& desperately spilled stories
told to you in confidence
in the kind of darkness
where the heart breaks open
& the cadences resonate.
 
No one writes it like you.
Your choir yells in relentless circles
building higher, pulsing.
The words sing your name
as they fall into place.
 
Stand back and look.
Look what you have created
& then— at us.
At all the things
you have dismantled
in the telling.