Dodo Eraser

As I swallow back the grief,
Refusing to let it climb back through my esophagus.
No matter what it takes.
Even if it means I must inhale the 20 years of nicotine
And smoke permanently etched onto the yellow walls
And degraded brown wooden floors
Of my uncle’s old Bryn Marr Apartment,
And threaten the health of my surfactant,
I know that I will find a greater life in a death by my own doing,
Then watching my hands twist the knife along
My abdominal aorta, staring into the dark
Seeing the hint of grief’s smile,
Knowing it succeeded in taking another victim.

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 work appears or is forthcoming in Hobart, The Brussels Review, Michigan City Review of Books, and editorials for The Xylom and MedPage Today. She has been nominated for multiple awards, including Best Small Fiction.More at NaaAshitey.com.