I stood tall on the shoulders of a ladder
lost in the fibers of dust that sprinkled across my face as I shook a thick feathered brush against walls when a young man whom I had seen a few times before looked me up and down and hollered, "movin' on up in the world, are yah?"

chucking my head upwards and back, I had laughed at his joke, saying to him through short breaths, "you with the corny lines."

still shaking with laughter, I felt my legs give beneath me and the thus the shoulder of the ladder beneath it, began to quake, before I knew any better, I had fallen  down to him, my body splintered beneath my wooden pedestal.