A Beginner's Guide to Free Fall

by Andy Abramowitz

Karma was merely the demonstrable truism that bad shit happened to everyone if you waited around long enough.

Right there in that greasy spoon, Davis became achingly conscious of the volatility of time. It spun everyone around, holding all of humanity together with great centrifugal motion, until the wear of the tracks and the rust of the bolts flung everyone wildly away from each other into outer spaces.

We’re all terribly unsure of ourselves, each one of us tunneling toward something strange. But you—you are nobody’s shadow. And even if you were, a shadow does not belong to the thing that casts it.

So much of life was holding on to the people and the things that rooted you in the world, so that you didn’t have to wake up each day and start anew.

You didn’t need to be crazy to leave. Sometimes you had to be crazy to stay.

It was okay to fear anything, even french toast. As long as you ate it anyway.

‘Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.’”