Were you a child who screamed only in fire alarms?

The first time I contemplated
pulling a fire alarm I wanted
to because I thought the lever was
like a pop-up book--peeling open
a passage like an orange rind-- a hideaway 
behind the tile walls of a pre-school
where I learned my colors, 
how to summarize myself in five letters, 
and how other kids always knew
it was easy to make someone
cry who was five letters tall--
S-A-R-A-H (And a fifth of me has always been silent)
The boys with police-car sneakers said, "Everything burns
when you pull the fire alarm-- everything burns--
we'll have no more benches or books to have to read
and sit."
And I wanted to pull the lever
and see what burning really looked like.
The first time I heard a fire alarm
I was the only one not to leave the play room--
The sound did not scare me it had
come from somewhere between my throat
and my jaw (the A and the R) -- spell
me out in sirens-- I drank it
in all my pores-- I became a scream
with it too and I screamed about
the boys who said in first grade
if you couldn't do homework they 
hid you under the floor boards
and fed you only bread and water
and orange rinds-- I
coiled in the cove of my wood-
block fortress-- I said you wouldn't
take it away from me-- And my teacher picked
me up like a four letter word.
And I wanted to pull the lever
but I knew what burning really looked like.
Everyone knows that fire alarms
mark their victims in black-light ink--
that you cannot scream without a fire
but every time we practice we can
let our lungs lose for once-- for
all the days of being a five letter
word-- for all the floor boards
you stepped over and all
the books left burning behind you
as we walked single file-- as if
you could scream while you were
walking in a line.
I told the the girl who had pony tails
that I saw smoke even when
I knew we were only screaming for practice-- 
for me it was never
a drill- there was always that fire--
that tongue-fire and not the type
that licked like Jesus-- the type
that still scream when I hear fire alarms
the type that sings like boys in 
police car shoes-- there was a time for
some of us that a fire drill meant
we could walk away from our skin
for a moment and pretend
that everything we ever feared
was only a pile of ash-- that we were
a phoenix. They told you not to take anything
with you. They scolded me when they 
did head count and found me holding
my stuffed dragon with chewed ears
and a stack of books I'd already read.
I said that I couldn't let them burn--
even though I knew it was only a drill--
I was still only five letters tall
with a fifth of me silent
as the grass outside the school
while we pretended to watch it burn.