I Built a Cathedral

(Seye. For lightness)

I didn’t know how to bury my grief
so I built it a cathedral.

Stone
upon
stone.

Psalm
upon
psalm.

I built a library in place of an altar.
I moulded my unanswered prayers into arches.
I learned to call every crack of betrayal a window.

I have catalogued every silence, erected
theologies against vulnerabilities. Named every
pillar after Jung. Chiselled Freud’s face on every gargoyle.
Indexed every dissonance that holds the roof aloft.

I can tell you who laid the first stone, which
ancestors carried the bricks, and the precise
harmattan they set the mortar.

I know everything except how to weep.

Sometimes I stand outside these walls. Joshua
before Jericho.

I understand.

God,
I understand.

I need the stones to fall.

So I could walk barefoot through the dust

to find the frightened child hiding
beneath the rubble and sit beside him.

Take his hand. And let him cry.

Perhaps,
just perhaps,
at last,

I will cry with him.

• Chris Ogunlowo