pray when you see an ambulance

a poem about growing up, fire, and the first time I understood death

crims poems

Apr 10, 2026

grandma said every time you see an ambulance

make the sign of the cross,

so we did —

whispered a little prayer.

someone’s trailer caught fire.

didn’t get out alive,

she died slow

stuck in her armchair.

mom said it was awful,

told us to let them be –

“don’t bother them people,

n don’t pester the dead.”

– they were handlin life’s grief.

rode past it on our bikes, saw the way it burnt.

melted siding,

grass burned to dirt.

trailer used to be red.

now it’s just the bones

of a home no one remembers

except the dandelions

n God.

said we got lucky,

didn’t feel like it.

felt like i never lived at all.

i don’t think we were supposed to be outside.

it was dark and we were standing in between the cars. i was watching the ambulance lights flash on my sister’s face, the smoke billow.
she was afraid, and she was right to be. we’d never seen anything like it before.

when a trailer catches fire it spreads fast. thats what everyone was worried about — what they'd do when it spread. not if, but when.

and by those standards we were lucky that it never did. i don’t remember one person saying she went peacefully, just that now she’d found peace.

the next day we got “the talk” — not the ‘when a man loves a woman' talk, but the death talk. where people go when they lose their life. what happens to them after.

it’s different.
one’s for creating life and the other is for the end of life.

we knew heaven and hell were a thing, like most believers do, but we’d never been the ones speculating. we’d never watched someone’s life puff up in flames.

it’s just different.

we knew Jesus died, but he rose again. that was the part i remembered — nowadays dad likes to say Jesus defeated death, and i’ve debated writing poems about that idea alone but i fear i don’t have enough skill for it just yet.

it wasn’t the same for her — that woman who died in her armchair. she was just dead.
we weren’t gonna see her again.

and i think that’s the first time i recognized the depth of what God really is.

this is another old poem, but it’s still one of my favorites. it sounds like me, which is something i somehow lost in my newer poems (that you’ll never see.)

when i first wrote this i thought it was absolutely awful that they just forgot about her. there was so much evidence in that trailer that someone lived, but in the end all that was left was evidence someone died.

it made me mad she was reduced to that.

but now that i’m thinking about it again they probably did remember her, it was just easier to pretend they didn’t.

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