whump

you are a pedestrian / the truck about to hit you / is driven by a man talking on a cell phone / to his wife who is leaving him

the sound of the impact / the hard huge truck imposes on your soft body / might be represented in a comic book / in the panel with the closeup of your stove-in lower ribs against the grillwork of the truck / by the sound-effects word “whump”

and in the next panel / of you on the asphalt on your back / the noise you make as you lie there coughing breath impeded by a rib-punctured lung / might be approximated by your word balloon / saying ” *kaf* *kaf* *kaf* ” / while in the background the fire truck coming might have the snakey sound effect “EEEEOHHHEEEOHHEEOHH”

and in the last-but-one panel with the muscular fireman reading the blood pressure cuff and shouting “sixty over thirty-five! dropping!!” your thought balloon might say in shaky letters “janelle…” and be connected to another thought balloon which is blank and implicative of either unconsciousness or death

and the last panel might be of the crowd looking down on your lifeless form and a woman about your age has a word balloon that says ” *sob* “

except there is no comic book / there was no accident / but maybe you won’t / answer the phone in your pocket / next time it rings while you are driving

seriously