Asteroid
(I wrote something this morning about how I was feeling. I wanted to share it. Please ignore this if you’re not up for it.)
Asteroid
This morning it was confirmed. The asteroid will come. Now, it is nothing but a vague mass, hurtling at some high speed through parts unknown, but scientists have located it, have calculated that on its current trajectory it will collide with Earth at some point in the future. Our future.
How big will it be? How many will die? What will remain? These are the questions that come naturally, to the grandparent and to the grandchild, when the inevitable shadow of the asteroid suddenly materializes, a dark emptiness, in their minds.
Is there anything that can be done? That one is the killer. What can we do now? What could we have done? Already military men are devising to blow it out of the sky and meticulous planners are assembling stockpiles and engineers are building bunkers to withstand the shock.
I hope that they succeed—all of them. Because the asteroid will come. It is real. It is enormous. Hard. Heavy. Sharp. When it collides with earth, the area that it hits—there are already suspicions of where that may be, but we cannot say for sure—the area that it hits will not stand a chance. It will become rubble. Shock waves will reverberate from the crater, ash will fill the sky, the earth’s axis may destabilize and hurl us all to our deaths. Yes. When the asteroid comes it will crush us.
But today we exist. There is a plastic dispenser of hand soap under a dirty mirror. There is quiet. The soap dispenser, the porcelain sink, the fragrant air coming in through the bathroom window. These are real too.
In the mirror I see my reflection. I squeeze the soap into my hands and wash them. They are soft and warm.