Weaver of Flesh and Ghosts

by Patrick Sylvain

(for Toni Morrison—1931-2019)

You didn’t just tell stories, Toni—
you conjured them.
Laid down words like roots,
deep and tangled,
pulling us into the earth’s bruised memory.

You built houses where grief learned to sing,
where the walls muttered the names
of those long gone,
but never quiet.
You opened the door
and dared us to sit with the dead.

Your language wasn’t ornamental—
it was bone with historical marrow;
it was blood. It cut, bled, healed.
You made words abundantly sharp
to slice through time, and
soft enough to cradle an aggrieved heart.

We felt the heat of Sula’s fire,
the weight of Sethe’s past,
the flight of Milkman,
each syllable an eagle’s feather,
lifting us off the ground.

You didn’t ask for our admiration.
You demanded our witness,
our reckoning.
A reckoning being silenced.
You lured us close, then made us see—
the beauty, the horror, the truth
pulsing beneath every story.

And in moments of stiff stillness—
knees on ribs—you let us breathe,
not in relief, but in knowing.
Knowing that language can burn,

and from those ashes, we ascend,
unbroken, reborn.

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Patrick Sylvain is a Haitian-American educator, poet, writer, and social and literary critic whose work explores Haiti and the Haitian diaspora’s culture, politics, language, and religion. The author of several poetry collections in English and Haitian, Sylvain’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appear in leading journals. Has degrees from UMass-Boston, Harvard, Boston University, and Brandeis University. Sylvain teaches Global, Transnational, and Postcolonial Literature at Simmons University. He has forthcoming works in 2026 with Central Square, Arrowsmith, and Finishing Line presses.