Dear white women who have worked with me on academic DEI initiatives, you are not the allies you think you are
By Naa Asheley Afua Adowaa Ashitey
Because I have already ripped 11 layers of tape off my mouth.
By the 12th, the point where my voice becomes hollow
and my soul lies on the edge of the bridge,
the exhale that I am finally able to take is stopped by your damsel wails.
I watch the nods you all share, the fallacies and corrupted beliefs that lead
you to justify a bullet entering my heart and stripping me of my ability to breathe.
All because the infinite reasons
you have postulated in your head that deem my existence as a
Threat
to your pink, pussy hat feminism.
Because I’m so sure you would’ve been able to burst through the glass celling
without the cracks I already made,
wearing your new, gilded crown of revolution and
“liberation” .
Naa Asheley Afua Adowaa Ashitey (She/Her/Hers) is a writer and aspiring physician-scientist from Chicago, currently living in San Francisco. Her works have been published in Soul Talk Magazine, Blacklight Magazine, Euphony Journal, The /tƐmz/ Review, Sage Cigarettes Magazine and The Xylom. She will be starting her MD-PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Summer 2024. More at www.NaaAshitey.com.