It will likely snow in a few days.
The spots will start to fade,
And become absent before the start of the June.
April showers will come and wash the rest away,
and pink blossoms from the park
will lift into the air,
landing where their last breaths were taken.
Until another blast rings out,
the street vibrates with footsteps and screams,
and the sidewalk is covered in red again.
For yet, another “Un-strange fruit” lies at the bottom of the tree,
Easy for hurried soles to squish and
And leave a stain that by all attempts
Refuses removal, thus,
seeps into the outdoor placemat,
the entryway carpet,
and the bedroom rug.
Now that it is clear
it is in their path,
that it cannot be dodged by ducking beneath a low branch
only time will tell if they honor this moment
by planting fresh trees
and ensuring the branches and roots
are kept alive with water.
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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, The Cincinnati Review, and editorials for The Xylom, MedPage Today, and KevinMD. She has been nominated for multiple awards, including Best Small Fiction.
https://bsky.app/profile/foreverasheley.bsky.social
