The Feather and the Bowling Ball

It's not the mass of the feather vs the bowling ball that makes them fall at different rates. Their masses, after all, are negligible compared to that which they fall to: the earth.

No, it's the shape. The air resistance. A feather with the mass of a bowling ball would still gently float to the ground, wafting back and forth… though it would carry with it so very much momentum. You wouldn't want a feather with the mass of a bowling ball to land on your foot, no matter how gently it appears to be tumbling down.

I suspect my feelings for you have always been massive, unreasonably so. I don't remember a time since we met that I wasn't drawn to you. And that draw, from that very first instant, has always been impossibly strong.

For those first seven or eight years, the mass of my feelings for you was spread out. A million barbs, each presenting that much more surface area to resist the air. Falling, gently yes but… always falling, from the very start.

For a while there, I could resist a little. It's forbidden, after all. Impossible. So I could cause a breeze to lift the feather back up, just a bit, just for a while. But gravity is inevitable.

I can't pinpoint exactly what changed, or when. But the barbs began to fuse, the vane bending in on itself. Surface area reducing as it crystalized into something more substantial, more solid. And with it, following its function as it will, the air resistance becoming more and more negligible.

Gone was the massive feather, gently wafting down, replaced by a perfect sphere, presenting so little surface area to the wind that the air may as well not be there.

Now no breeze, no wind can stop it, or even delay it. And by now the momentum is incredible. I'm not even sure the earth itself could halt its fall… Or if it does, the destruction would be terrific.

Good thing the ground is still nowhere in sight.