Gravity

For years I was friends with a woman who broke glasses. Nothing, it seems, could keep her from dropping wine glasses and tumblers, juice glasses and goblets. In the days after she'd been over for dinner, I'd spend hours sliding my bare feet across the surface of the floor, trying to catch a shard of glass before someone else did. I'd stand on stools and crouch in corners, shining flashlights in almost unimaginable angles hoping for a glint of glass. It happened so often and for so long I came to believe it was a part of gravity. Now, with her gone, I'm given the luxury of holding my own glass more carelessly, sometimes balancing it on my head as I spin wildly, sometimes placing it just so as I type and type waiting for that old familiar sound.