I trip on the title, 

clumsy as I am, and 

topple down the first few 

lines. Dorton calls it getting 

dropkicked into a poem, some

secondary speaker forcing the other 

over the edge, but this was a mess of my

own making, the mind meandering as it does,

dispatching enjambments where they don’t be-

long. And now there’s a figure tumbling forth, their

bony parts smacking the serifed lips of line breaks and 

yellow pine. It is not until they reach the carpet-soft landing

that the world above comes back into focus—kids’ toys in the

hallway, a blue bird that found its way indoors. But now that we’re

here together, it’s easy to see why gravity constantly pulls us to the final

line: it is where the writer and reader can link hands, link breath, and if done

correctly, purposefully, will become a platform from which to ascend in unison.