Free Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

this is it , then I’m ready. I’m dark matter. The universe inside me is full of something, and science can’t even shine a light on it. I feel like I’m mostly made of mysteries.
    Inside my chest, I hear the whistling of a little bird, something singing me to sleep.
    The ambulance is stopped, lights and sirens still on, ice beneath our tires, and the EMT in the back with us radios for a helicopter, her voice panicky, “Emergency . . .”
    The red-haired medic runs out and looks up at the sky. “Signaling,” he shouts. He goes into the white, and all around him is a halo of snow.
    I’m an ocean with a giant squid inside it. There’s a bird buffeting, flying around and banging hard against my ribs.
    “Pneumonia,” the paramedic says.
    “Aza, don’t,” my dad says, an order. “DO NOT DO THIS.”
    I want to listen.
    I look at my dad. I’m looking at myself, and what I was is starting not to matter to me at all.
    Where am I going?
    Readyreadyready says the bird in me. And someone outside answers Readyreadyready .
    Something hits my chest, hard, and then it’s gone. My chest? Is it even mine? Then, no, I see, it’s the medic using crash pads on my heart.
    Jason says, “You don’t have to die.”
    Eli’s talking fast into her cell phone.
    “Mommy-you-have-to-get-here-now-right-now-hurry-I-don’t-know-I-don’t-know-what-happened-it’s-really-bad—”
    I hear my mom through the phone, telling Eli it’ll be okay, and she sounds so certain that I almost think it will be, that there’s something I don’t know, but then Eli says, wailing,
    “But it’s already not okay!”
    Readyreadyready
    The crash pads hit me again, hard, at chest level. Eli’s put her phone to my ear.
    I can hear my mom.
    I hear her take a deep breath. I hear her pushing words out, and I can almost see her, for a second, the look on her face, her hand pressed to her own heart, the other in a fist.
    “You can go if you have to go,” my mom says, and her voice shakes, but she’s solid. She says it again, so I’ll know. “You can go if you have to go, okay, baby? Don’t wait for me. I love you, you’re mine, you’ll always be mine, and this is going to be okay, you’re safe, baby, you’re safe—”
    I’m hearing my mom talking, feeling her in my ear and not in my ear at the same time.
    There’s a blast of cold air and the redheaded medic comes back in.
    “Chopper’s coming,” he mutters to the other paramedic, and pushes himself into the space beside me. “Get the girl’s family to move back.”
    He pushes the other medic away, too hard. She winces. His hands are working on me in ways that make no sense.
    I feel something slide into my skin, near my left lung. It’s a cut, but it’s different from any cut I’ve ever felt before. Pain or release? I feel myself dividing, right where my tilted lungs are, right where my ribs have always been wrong.
    “What are you doing?” I hear my dad say.
    “Sir, you’re getting in the way of an emergency procedure. We’re trying to keep her breathing. Stay back.”
    “Calm down,” the female medic says. “It’s okay, it’s going to be okay.”
    She’s trying to keep my dad from looking at what’s happening, but I catch a glimpse of his face, his eyes.
    I have no voice. I’m trying to say no.
    The man’s tying a rope to me, I can feel it, around my chest, but I can’t see it.
    “I’m making an incision for her to breathe. Please, sir, move back now ,” the medic says.
    “This isn’t it,” Jason says urgently. “This isn’t happening. Don’t let it, Aza. They’re going to find a way to— Oh my god.”
    He sobs. The paramedic’s looking down at me and I’m looking up at him. He’s has his hand in my shirt pocket, and he’s taking something out of it. The note—
    There’s pressure on my neck and there’s still no pain. There’s a splitting, something falling off, and that feeling of a rope around my chest, and my body is halfway on the gurney and halfway