Ajar
Grayson Goga

like outstretched arm o’er windowsill,
tumbling through the opulent gateway                unto
baby’s pale sadness, broke but by a
fraction of a fraction of an instant
from which our fingertip then strode
its threshold—happening not more
forward than backwards          than
at all:
            to birth the sky is to breathe.
to thank mother is to tie one’s shoe.
to sink one’s busied leg into pools of mirth,
cupped hands clasped, cauterized—young wrinkles
a corrugation birthing hot milk, begging for sips.
an irreverent kiss against this new, thin silentman,
beaming bulletpupils through the pulpit.

we know perhaps beneath this sill lies only space.
time enough to turn and witness the         stillness
of what’s past and what’s not again to grace breaths
or be swallowed in a sleepy throat. only disturbed,
tasted, held, worn beneath wet tongues
in its absence.                                           a prayer of
the barren bedroom, then back through the shutters
of which will too be lost in the sun’s departure
its fall.

                        from instinct you, likening the
breeze of gravitous plummet, rotate downward, globally.
stolid seasons erupting in mulch, meeting soft and
nude footpalms.

                        wriggling figtoes, bulbous pores
                        breaking behind where we’ll be.

a sparrow then fishes for breakfast, the riches of a
flowerbed. if father has taught me anything it’s a
thing like
                you always decide,

especially when you do not.

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