Blueprints for a Safe Room

The tax returns are buried in a pile

next to a sketchbook from the third-grade year.

I stop to flip the pages for a while

and feel a sudden, cold and specific fear.

I drew the houses like a box of stone,

with heavy locks and not a single pane.

A place where I could safely be alone

and listen to the tapping of the rain.

The blue crayon didn't touch the roof,

the sky was just a waxy, blunt-edged line.

A seven-year-old's clumsy, colored proof

that nothing in the world was really mine.