Poetry by Naa Asheley Ashitey

Tomas Soldan CC




A Poem in Response to Time Is A Mother

I am trying to understand 
the lessons that life 
has thrown at me. 

I think it is pulling me a particular direction, 
and it has been for a quite a while,
And yet my stubbornness has 

pushed this feeling down for ages.
But now, I don’t think 
I can ignore it much longer.

I need to start living 
a more honest life, 
Not perfect, just honest. 

So, I’m going to 
lay it out and 
confess it all. 

My mother and father are 
two sides of 
the same coin

Two people who honestly shouldn’t be together 
And two people who found each other because 
no one else could deal with their bullshit 

It’s a miracle that 
all of us have made it out alive
in our two houses 

I miss the red paint 
that decorated the celling around our 
Black marble kitchen island. 

I miss watching July 4th fireworks
From our 13th floor window, 
and the next day,

As I was watching Disney Channel 
alone in the house 
because they were at work,

Panicking as the screen turned grey
and the NWS “Tornado Warning” alert 
blasted in the house.

I miss the feeling of fear 
That raced through 
My veins 

Thinking that I was going to die
In a tornado, even though it is 
2007 Chicago 

And climate change was still in her
Regular bitch 
phase.

and so I’d simply see the storm 
come in from those same 
13th floor windows 

and as always, 
it just ends up being a 
crazy thunderstorm. 

and it was Naperville or Peoria 
that the warning 
actually applied for,

because I was 7 years old and 
was intellectual enough to 
recognize my parents 
could not afford to buy me Converse’s
 
and I would be stuck to buying shoes at Payless
until it went bankrupt, 
but a dumb enough child to not realize that 

Chicago is a city, 
Cook is the County we live in and 
That weather alerts go by County.  

A stupid and
Somewhat hyper aware
Adultified child. 

How weird is it that I miss 
A time that 
Made me want to 

Be 26 and 
In a better marriage
Then my parents were in

Because I somewhat believed
That even though they loved each other
I did not want “their” love. 

And yet I have been falling asleep 
On the eve 
Of being 26 

And I keep thinking about
That type of love,
I keep thinking about that 13th floor apartment

I keep thinking about 
How that place is still
Full of memories of my parent’s arguments

My mother slapping my dad 
One morning before I went to school
And my dad walking away 

In the special red light
He installed in the house
Before I was born

Other nights I think 
About the mornings when
I ran to my dad crying

Holding onto his legs 
begging him not to leave
and go to work because

we did not get to spend enough time together 
because he was always working and 
I missed him

Some mornings I might’ve 
apologized 
that I existed

And that I did not mean to 
make their life 
so complicated 

And that I can always
Leave and then the house 
Can become silent again

And they won’t look like
They hate each other
And I won’t be the reason

Why their marriage
Seemed to be
More complicated than the movies made it seem 

I now laugh at the 
Idea I held onto for 
14 solid years

That I believed my dad
regretted having me
As his second daughter

I’ve held from the absurdity
That I believed that 
When he walked out the house

To go to work
It was a relief for him to 
Not have to look at me, 

a reminder of why 
he was going to have
to drive a taxi until 

he is fucking 80-something years young
because America is so fucked up
as a country and won’t give him the rest he deserves. 

What a fucking time that was

​



​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 Eunoia Review, BULL, Hobart, Michigan City Review of Books, and editorials for The Xylom, MedPage Today and KevinMD. She has been nominated for multiple awards, including Best Small Fiction. More at NaaAshitey.com.




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