all the way down

The ambulance screams behind me. I should have made way but the music is 5 decibels from rupturing the tympanic membrane in my ear canal and the siren is being muzzled by a track I found in a quora thread about how binaural beats can heal IBS and early-stage infertility. I don’t have either, but I’m listening for preventative reasons.

I imagine myself then, strapped to the stretcher of the ambulance, eyes wide and pleading, feeling every second snapping in two, then three, then a thousand pieces. The angels descend, all feather and muscle, their hands reaching for me, faces carved with hunger, and I feel the universe fold in on itself, folding me with it. And just before I flatline, I hear the medic mutter that the fucking prius up ahead won’t get out of the way.