NEEDLE FROM SPACE
If a needle travelling at the speed of light hit earth it would destroy the planet and all living things on it. According to one theory of theoretical physics at least. The needle, while hurtling towards us, would build with an incomprehensible amount of kinetic energy. This destructive power would wreak its havoc on the Earth when the needle made contact. It would be equivalent to a nuclear bomb. Fire, impact and shockwaves would decimate infrastructure and life. And radiation would finish the job, killing all living beings. The impact could leave behind a nuclear winter. That we would not be privy to see.
But a needle cannot reach the speed of light. It is neither physically nor theoretically possible.
But what if
What if my body bruises purple? My blood is pink. My shiny parts chrome. My body is laid with train tracks across expanse
of what turns into dust.
Apparently.
What if he takes me apart?
puts me back together again
and seals me off with a kiss
on the knee
and then another twenty. Thirty. Thousand.
What if he burns so warm? So hot. In the mornings when I remark it, we laugh gently. At the double meaning. He’s built broad, dense, solid. There is a radiance from his face. Again, burning. Burning hot, hot white. In a clean saintly kind. When I turn towards him in bed it scorches my face, leaves the edges blackened and ready to crumble, gather into soot. Into dust.
Apparently.
The needle from space hits. Nothing happens. Because it cannot happen. Or
craters blow
and the North Sea plunges.
The Himalayas crumble and new mountains rise.
The wildflowers in the fields are singed
and the cows out to pasture cry their single cry.
The atoms in my skin tremble. Something so wrong is happening. I am the needle. I am the earth it destroys. I am the impossible happening. I am the thing in which the impossible happens to.
Nothing happens. Because it cannot happen. Or
the farmer curls his heavy working chest over his daughters. The little finger of the eldestcomes barely to rest on the youngest’s back. The farmer’s wife does not make it to the main house. The scientists are dumbfounded. Frozen in ash with their eye sockets pressed to their telescopes. They may pray: Who sent this being? This object? This light? This entity? This impossible that takes form.
Authors Note: I am not a theoretical physicist. Any discrepancies and inconsistencies in this essay can be blamed on the possession of a sentimental writers’ heart and a tendency to the dramatic.
Credit to calculating the impossible goes to Comagoj Pernar at curiousmatrix.com
Accessed on: [https://curiousmatrix.com/what-if-a-needle-hit-the-earth-at-the-speed-of-light/#:~:text=According%20to%20theoretical%20physics%2C%20if,contact%20with%20the%20Earth's%20surface.]
Olivia Linnea Rogers / OLR, 22, London - England ✯ IG: @olivialinnearogers & TWT: @olivialinrogers
“Olivia Linnea Rogers is a Norwegian-British fiction and non-fiction writer. And poet if you’re lucky. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Queen Mary University of London. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming with Subtexts, Nowhere Girl Collective and Persephone’s Fruit.”