by Naa Asheley Ashitey
Where am I supposed to land?
I’ve never been accustomed to grassy lawns
And each time I dream about reaching the stars,
I awake to the sight of a concrete slab above me.
Even floorboards that are not supposed to creak
Give a slight sob with each step I take.
I hurt, I hurt,
But I am also hurting.
All I wish is for my body
to be able to rest on a surface
That embraces the pains of the days held along my sacrum
And leaves a soft kiss at the top of my forehead,
Granting my cortex the rest it has needed.
______
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 scientific research focuses on cancer immunology, with a particular interest in how factors within the tumor microenvironment influence the efficacy of immunotherapies such as CAR T cell and checkpoint inhibitor therapies. Her creative and editorial writing examines how policy, media, and academia reproduce structural violence—and what it means to resist with truth. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Hobart, The Brussels Review, JAKE, and in editorials for The Xylom and MedPage Today. More at NaaAshitey.com, Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky.
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