Fireproof Morning

Dawn on the cold sidewalk
Smoke still in my jacket
Fireproof morning
Smoke did not win

A plastic bag of papers
Was everything I had left
Neighbors standing barefoot
Wrapped in borrowed coats

Sirens winding down the block
Like the night ran out of red
Ash was falling soft as snow
On everything unsaid

Somebody kept saying names
Like names could keep us close
I kept apologizing
For what I couldn't save

Shock can make the innocent
Sound guilty in their pain
Then the woman from upstairs
Put a charger in my hand

You're still here
Start there if you can

So I charged a dying phone
Against a stranger's kitchen wall
And watched the missed call names light up
Turns out I hadn't lost it all

Smoke did not win
Did not win
Fire did not take my name
Ash on my shoes
But I did not lose
Fireproof morning
I still carry flame

I did not lose
Did not lose
I did not lose
Did not lose
Smoke did not win

Later in the rooms
Black walls silent floor
I touched the place the table stood
Like it might answer more

Behind a fallen shelf
One picture made it through
Corners brown and curling
But I could still see you

Your grandmother at a kitchen sink
Laughing at the lens
Proof that what a house holds
Isn't where a family ends

I didn't call it miracle
Couldn't speak that high
I just held it shaking
Under a smoke white sky

The insurance called it total
But they don't know how to weigh
The parts of me that wouldn't burn
And got up anyway

Smoke did not win
Did not win
Fire did not take my name
Ash on my shoes
But I did not lose
Fireproof morning
I still carry flame

I stopped saying everything is gone
Out loud
The morning that the sunlight
Crossed my face

I will grieve the couch
The door
The photographs
Grief and gratitude
Can stand in the same place

Some things burned around me
Some things burned away
But they could not burn my name
And they could not burn this day

What the fire couldn't take
Say it
What the smoke couldn't hold
Say it
What the night couldn't finish
Say it

Carry it out of the ashes
Carry it into the gold

Smoke did not win
Did not win
Fire did not take my name
Ash on my shoes
But I did not lose
Fireproof morning
I still carry flame
Still carry flame

I did not lose
Did not lose
I did not lose
Did not lose
Smoke did not win

Six months on
A new place
Bare walls
Secondhand chairs

That curled and browning photograph
Framed at the top of the stairs
The neighbors from that morning
Still text me now and then

The ones who stood there barefoot
Turned to family in the end
Fireproof morning
I still carry flame