i.
We broke the bread along the coastline.
The pieces first float along
the white waves of the pacific before
it got swallowed down
with the sand and hope.
ii.
I don’t know when I stopped breathing,
nor when my eyes rolled back
and woke up with my right leg
bent outward.
iii.
I’m not awake enough to process
what you’re whispering.
I can only simply turn my head
and look out at the water.
iv.
The smell of low tide
invades my olfactory senses.
I do my best to pay attention
to the oncoming wave;
Your hand moves in circles
between my shoulder blades, rubbing my back.
The waves crash and I come apart
Naa Asheley Ashitey 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 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. WEB INSTA
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