Implosion

"2011," I heard the announcer on TV say that that year was the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the 1986 Challenger Tragedy. "Everyone remembers where they were when it exploded," he said.

I was in a bar on that date in '86 thoughtlessly waiting for the empty coffin of myself to implode.

(Surimi): Implosion. No fireworks. No Fourth of July. An entire life crumbling in upon itself. Like a black hole, so dense that no light can escape. There are no rubber-neckers to implosions. Implosions are not cause to celebrate. There is nothing to see. Not communal. Nothing communal here. Solitary. Alone. Entirely.

If one, then, survives this implosion, then, I suppose that there is some hope of finding a way out.

 

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Chapter 46)