i finished my cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray.  getting up to go inside, i swiveled on my feet and kicked the glass with my spinning heel.  i watched it slowly careen over the white-painted planks of the staircase, turning end over end.  and then it smashed against the concrete and broke into a surprisingly small number of large, white shards.  the sound was more violent than i imagined it would be, probably because the glass shattered on a narrow passageway between two buildings, where the violence of the sound was magnified artificially.  in the moments before impact, the glass seemed to hover, and despite my previous experience with falling glass objects, i believed for a second or two that nothing would happen to the glass, that it would remain whole and unbroken, and that upon impact the glass would laugh back at the laws of nature with a loud and resilient clink that would seem to shout “i am stronger than gravity!”  but instead the usual occurred and i silently grimaced and went indoors to grab a bag, into which i would place every visible shard that remained, because there are children that live downstairs and also because it’s just bad form to do nothing about a broken glass.