NAA ASHELEY ASHITEY

Naa Asheley Ashitey is a Chicago-born writer and MD–PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A first-generation, low-income Ghanaian-American and University of Chicago alumna, she writes at the intersection of race, medicine, and belonging. Her creative and editorial writing examines how policy, media, and academia reproduce structural violence—and what it means to resist with truth. Her creative work appears or is forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Brittle Paper, Heavy Feather Review, BULL and editorials for The Xylom, Live Science, The Scientist, MedPage Today and KevinMD. She has been nominated for multiple awards, including Best Small Fiction and a finalist for the Claire Keyes Poetry Award and Subnivean Awards in Poetry. More at NaaAshitey.com.

GENERATIONAL WEALTH

The dominos haven’t fallen into place just yet.

The eggs have not reached their spot to where

they can be fertilized,

but I already know the resting heart rate

of those future embryos.

The selfish thing would be to swallow the

key, so that the door

behind me remains locked

and I can travel to wherever I please,

maybe taking a pit stop in the type of life

that thus far, only comes to fruition when the exhaustion

hits so greatly that even God passes on some mercy,

lets someone else take lead in the battle for the night,

and grants me a good dream.

But alas, since I am the carrier of generations,

I must dig up the path from the rubble

and form the skyscrapers where they will be able to

rest with the clouds.

The bedroom I told my father

I wanted when I was five,

The one with the pink wall,

likely exists in one of those hallways.

But alas, I have found that

I only know how to sleep on cold tiles,

wrapped up in hangnails

and to the sound of tenebrous tunes.

emulsify, rinse and repeat

The ghost will have its way,

counting down until the sun

can no longer

creep through the windowpanes,

and refract against the specs of dust along

the wooded bed frame.

In due time,

it can resume its traversions

through the house.      

it might rest in the kitchen for once,

letting its hands graze the sharp part of the blade, kissing along where blood would’ve normally trekked down

it’s palm and arm.

I can’t tell you why it would do such a thing,

engage in such an act of machoism,

it can’t speak.

I only know that the ghost is having a bad day

When the heats in on in the house all day, but all I can only pay attention to is the single line of wind that seems

to survive and engulf

the sides of my ankles.

 

TO BE A BLACK GIRL IN THE WORKPLACE

Is to learn that the selective muteness

I sometimes fall into

can be categorized as more violent,

then the next semi-automatic that will cause

my cousins in Ghana to recognize that city’s name,

with the same familiarity that they have

when I say I’m from the states

and they respond with

“New York?”

SUPPER

Tonight, peace feels like a rumor

But I believe in it anyway,

Enduring the loneliness

that marches alongside.

Hope will dissolve in the solvent.

I take communion with my hands tied,

the burgundy staining parts of my front teeth

and the back half of my tongue.

A warm chill travels down my leg.

He is with me.

I can breathe again.

EMBRYOLOGY AND ENDOCRINOLOGY

Sometimes I wish I could tell my mom how

I have been having baby fever lately.

That I want to wake up in the morning next my partner,

The one that she does not approve of,

As if she is the one who gets to laugh at his jokes

Or gets to fuck him out of an argument,

And see in the corner a crib with our child

Who might be a striking image of him at that time,

But later, on a random grocery run when they turn fifteen,

Will become my reflection.

I wish I could tell her that I want to hold a child,

Know that they are mine,

Sing to them when they smile or cry,

Teach them the joys of being able to turn a page in a book

On their own and seeing the words that continues a story.

I’m not ready for that yet,

I know I’m not.

And I am fine with waiting until I know that I am truly ready to

embark on the journey of parenthood.

But I still wish I could tell my mom how I’ve been having baby fever.

And how much it scares me.

Because I took embryology last spring and every single week

I thought about her, how many times she told God no,

Because her physicians showed her that

He made a uterus that was never

Supposed to be able to carry anything to term.

I cried at every graph that showed the drop in fertility

I am expected to have at 33;

The first year of my life where

I will rarely be stuck inside ivy covered buildings

and instead bustling through hallways contained

with portraits of academics and anatomy posters

on the way to a patient’s room.

The year that I thought I would be saving lives

and bringing a new life into this complicated plane.

More than her approving of the man I love,

I wish she’d come with me to an appointment

to have the shape of my uterus inspected.

To know whether I truly am her reflection,

whether I share her pink,

and if I will need to prepare myself

to tell God to go fuck Himself,

and give me the child I deserve.

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