Words were always my tiny hammers to break the glass. I had seen them in the halls of Washington Elementary, but of course we didn’t have smoke alarms, or a fire extinguisher at home. But we did have books. We had poems. 

At some point my mother must have given me the drill, but I don’t remember not knowing. It could help in almost any situation. The list would have read something like this, “In case of emergency, read a poem, memorize a poem, write a poem, be a poem.” Her favorites lines were marked in books, underlined, rewritten on sticky notes by the phone, recited over phone lines, hugged into the separation between hearts. 

I’m so immersed in it, I often forget what those tiny hammers have gotten me through. I was walking with a new friend on the path the other day. She asked about my afternoon. I told her. She said, “it sounds like a poem.” I smiled, still knowing the drill.

I suppose there will ever be ceilings and barriers, struggles to surpass, and fires to put out. But I have the tools. My mother saw to that. I live in the word. I am the poem.