Ascent

I want less and less to become the knife, 
or the white man it wields; only 

to have him witness me and call it progress. 
I enter the horizon and promise 

to keep quiet. I make myself excellent 
and imaginary, crawl higher and higher, 

land in the fire escape and watch the shadows 
in the alley glint, some minor prophet’s 

streetlit heaven. I climb up to the roof 
and open myself to flight. Cars rushing past 

like messiahs, autumn trees no longer 
pretending to bloom. I’ll answer 

your question: yes, I know my name. 
I know where I’m from and why I am 

unlikely. I know everything holy is only 
a failure of distance; a man, far enough 

from his knife, turns into memory. Sometimes 
when people say I’m knocking em dead 

I remember that everything exemplary I know 
or ever will begins with a small girl 

on the floor begging please 
please make them see me 

---

Gaia Rajan lives in Andover, MA. She's the Managing Editor of The Courant and the Poetry Editor of Saffron Literary. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in DIALOGIST, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Split Lip Magazine, Hobart, Rust+Moth, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Moth Funerals, is forthcoming from Glass Poetry Press in fall, and she is a National Student Poet semifinalist. She is sixteen years old.