Poetry
Signatures
Josiah Goga
it’s all about
having dinner on the balcony &
walks along the river &
your favorite ice cream flavor &
not falling off the skateboard &
coming home to your bed &
rediscovering the guitar &
the intro to your wedding song &
your mother’s maiden name &
the name of the street you grew up on &
laughing at an inside joke &
hearing a band perform live &
hot showers & open windows & iced coffee &
dragonflies, birds, the clock at 3:33,
your signature on a receipt &
where you keep your spare keys.
get swept in &
lose track of where & why &
they come in retrospect.
Author: Josiah Goga
Bio: Josiah Goga (he/him) is a first-year medical student at the University of Michigan who was born and raised in Ann Arbor, MI. He is especially interested in writing poems that discuss identity, spirituality, immigration, and community.
Commentary: This was a piece I wrote when nearing the end of my first year of medical school, when I was reflecting on the past year and wondering what meaning and purpose looked like outside of medicine. In writing this, I came to the conclusion that meaning is lived through the accumulation of individual moments, and these moments are the differential expressions of one's own identities.