When the fire alarm went off
at three in the morning
we all fled like roaches from a bug bomb
out of our rooms at the Charlesgate,
down the stairwells in bathrobes and slippers,
even the crippled girl in 303,
frail legs tapering like spindles,
propping herself on crutches,
grasshopper-like in her lunges
down the carpeted hallway.
 
From the threshold at the entrance on Kenmore Square,
I saw the firetrucks’ red-blue whirligig
through a light scrim of March snow
stirring up the residents’ panic
like kernels in a popcorn popper,
before we were herded out into the cold,
where we swarmed about the wet sidewalk,
the damp seeping into my slippers.
 
Then I saw Janine, hovering like a honeybee
in the hive of a building crevice, barefoot,
dancing from one foot to the other,
and I forgot all about my own discomfort,
drawn to her like a drone to the queen.
 
I offered her a slipper to stand in,
and we both stood stalk-like on one leg,
propped against each other,
a pair of praying mantises,
until we were allowed back in: false alarm. 
 
Janine lived two floors above me,
a room I came to know well
in the months to come
before we rented 
a Beacon Hill one-bedroom together.