🙃 Falling

So. That was stupid.

There’s a cliché in the movies—a trope. Something terrible is about to happen; you know it, I know it, everyone in the audience knows it. The close-up of a nut vibrating its way free from a bolt in a rotor means fate is in the house. The words “don’t leave the path” echo in the theater as the camera pans down to the feet of someone not noticing they have already left the pavement means the clock is ticking. A sudden screech of scattering birds just as they think they’re safe means Bonnie and Clyde will barely have time to exchange tender, wistful looks before rough justice turns them into bloody rag dolls.

Like that, only different.

It’s not that the world slows down. It’s that your mind speeds up. You’re barely moving, but everything else seems frozen. No one has seen you throw your leg over the railing. They don’t know your world is barreling toward them.

At the desk, a clerk—tattooed and ponytailed—validates a parking ticket, the muscles in his hand and forearm flexing as he punches the card. A dusky woman waiting for the elevator wears bright primary colors. In her arms, she cradles a toddler with pink barrettes and thumb in her mouth, who is looking straight at the falling man (which of these things doesn’t belong?), the beginning of a string of drool dripping like a question onto the dusky woman’s incandescent dress.

Four stories up is a bad place to have second thoughts. Practical questions crowd into your mind. At what point do you reach terminal velocity? Is it better to face away from the landing?

Lobby. 

Tall glass windows. 

Light. 

Atrium—an atrium is a chamber of the heart.

You fall through slices of time—thin like air on Everest. You are the rock in the slingshot, its rubber stretching taut. You breathe as if through a sieve.

If you ever dreamed of being a bird and believed dreams come true, this would be a good time for some proof, a good time to adjust flaps, throttle up, and roll out of this dive into stable flight. The word “plumage” comes to mind. 

Plumage. 

Atrium. 

If you were a bird, what would they call you? A plummet.

A balloon of laughter inflates in your belly, but not enough to arrest your descent.

No one is directly underneath you—as far as you can tell—so at least you won’t be taking anyone with you (another thought that would have been more useful two floors earlier). You decide you’d rather not land on your face, but that choice is out of your hands.

Your shirt—released momentarily from gravity—flutters across your face. For the thinnest moment, momentum seems to stop, and you’re sure you’ve flown into a cloud or a flock of angels.

People will ask why. You would, too. You’d say—like Camus’ Stranger—“because the sun was in my eyes,” an answer but not a reply. Maybe it’s a bad translation. Perhaps he meant something else entirely. Were you ill? Unhappy? Was it over a woman? Were you on medication? You’d like to be able to tell them. You’d like to be able to say you thought this through.

More slices of time, more increments toward the floor. You want to believe in grace, but when they examine security cameras later, you know you’ll look as aerodynamic as an octopus.

Here’s the thing. You didn’t want to jump. Not really. At least, you’re pretty sure you didn’t. You think you’re pretty sure.

Reasons why not to jump:

Reason one: it’s stupid.

Reason two: it’ll hurt. =Not for long, or maybe not at all. Then you remember stories of guillotined Frenchmen whose severed heads still— nix that… not a useful line of thought.

Reason three: it’s stupid.

Reason four: really stupid.

Reason five: it accomplishes NOTHING.

Reason six: see reasons one through five.

You pass through the tipping point, and the slingshot snaps forward. The floor charges toward you like a lover in the airport returning from Seattle.

Consider your mother, brother, and sister. Consider your girlfriend. She thinks you hung the moon. Consider the friend you’re meeting for lunch, sitting before a basket of bread and water with lemon, staring at his phone, wondering what has become of you.

What has become of you?

The pattern on the floor comes into focus. You rehearse your apologies.

I’m sorry for this. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Plumage. 

Atrium.

A security guard, with his weight on one leg—surprisingly agile for a big man—swivels and sinks into a sprinter’s crouch, but he’ll never make it. A woman in Armani, legs crossed on a sofa, looks up from her latte and phone, pupils expanding without comprehension. The mother is reacting now, her impulse to turn her child’s head away. The string of drool makes a diagonal in the air.

If you breathe out now, cold Mexican tiles would radiate your breath back at you, and you haven’t really thought about death until now; haven’t thought about what God or gravity might have in store for you, just processing data, taking it all in, how unbelievably stupid. 

What has become of you?

Anyway, it’s only four stories. I probably won’t even—

SPONSORED

This week’s ad slot was purchased by friend of Foofaraw, Evan Passero, in support of Elevated Access—a non-profit organization that enables people to access healthcare by providing flights on private planes at no cost, whose volunteer pilot network transports clients seeking abortion or gender-affirming care across the United States.

Foofaraw will match up to $300 in donations to DIFFA Dallas, Elevated Access, and Denton Community Food Center through the remainder of 2025.

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