To expunge this memory from the record.
by Naa Asheley Ashitey
Watch the way the clavicle collapses
Beneath the heel of the boot.
The strain it placed on the bone
Was too fast for angiogenesis.
The snap was instant; she was not built for this.
The crack extends to the xyphoid.
I can smell Azrael on the jagged edges.
I am brought to my knees.
the tombstone lays in front of me.
I dream of hope
and pray for the taste of guilt to dissolve from my tongue.
Naa Asheley Ashitey (She/her/hers) is a Chicago-born writer, a Doctors for America Copello Health Advocacy Fellow 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 work appears or is forthcoming in Fahmidan Journal, trampset, The Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Brittle Paper and editorials for Live Science, The Scientist, MedPage Today and more. She has been nominated for multiple awards and is working on her first poetry collection.
More at NaaAshitey.com.
Twitter/Instagram: @foreverasheley
Bluesky: @foreverasheley.bsky.social
