Confessions to a Three-Year-Old
Next to every elevator
reads a sign, In Case of Fire,
Take Stairs. I was the elevator
set ablaze, traveling
out of control from high to low.
Full of destruction at the point
of combustion, running out of oxygen.
All I saw was fire, consuming
the living, turning memory to dust.
I was engulfed
with voices
like nails clawing at my skull.
Johnny, you are the stairs.
When I met you, I feared you like my own mortality,
certain the embodiment of annihilation
was not worth saving.
Better left to disintegration.
I held your sleeping body,
the heat from my palms subsided,
the screams behind
my eyes went quiet.
For the first time,
my tears did not burn my cheeks.
My mind became a stairwell,
when your laughter echoes
I am not alone. I am not
a hollowed-out chamber.
I never meant to be the elevator.
A charred, unrestrained vessel of havoc.
In Case of Fire,
Take Stairs. Johnny, together
we are a skyscraper.
I will tirelessly climb the expanse.