What are words, really, but letters and sounds?

When arranged into a message, words can be powerful.

“Every word means something different in some way to someone else,” says Nico Patino. “Words really are nothing more than sounds that we give meaning to.”

Patino is a street-side poet based in Long Beach.

Nearly every day, the 28-year-old sets up his chair, desk and typewriter on the sidewalk along 2nd Street with a sign that reads “Ask me for a poem.”

“It takes about five minutes. They can give me as little as a word or a few words, but I can work with just a mood, a story, a question,” Patino says.

For a small donation, Patino begins by asking questions, writing poems for people based on their answers.

Often, he records their interactions and posts them on his Instagram page, which boasts nearly 60,000 followers.

“Really, all I need from whoever it is that approaches me,” Patino explains, “is some sort of personal thread from their heart.”

About a month ago, Patino received one of the most personal stories yet.

A woman approached him asking for a poem and did not expect to detail her divorce, something she said distresses her five years later.

The clip, dubbed “Woman crying at the bank,” was viewed one million times, but the woman never revealed herself until Thursday.

“I had to leave the house to come to the bank,” said Daisy Holohan, the mystery woman in Nico’s video. “When I came out, I saw someone sitting at a wooden table on a wooden chair with a manual typewriter.”

Holohan could never have anticipated that her curiosity that day would lead to a life-changing moment.

“I may count the years, but the years can’t count. I’m so much more than them, than men. I’m 57 and gorgeous, like a wisdom tree. I’m here still, forever me,” Patino wrote for Holohan, who was stunned by the honest and beauty of his words.

The 57-year-old said she had been in a difficult place emotionally, unwilling to leave her house, only coming to the bank that day out of necessity.

“I told him what was most on my mind, which was that I’ve been struggling,” she said. “I did not expect to get something with so much meaning.”

Those words had more meaning than either Holohan and Patino could’ve ever imagined.

The two reunited Thursday for the first time since they first met.

“You had no way of knowing that I had not left my house in almost a week, you know? And since then, I have and I go out, I take my walks again, I’ve met up with my girlfriends twice,” Holohan told Patino.

“Thank you,” she added.

“Thank you,” he replied, as Holohan began crying again.

“Crying at the bank for a third time,” she said as she laughed.

“I try to just write the truth, especially because I can’t make assumptions. I don’t know these people. They are in fact strangers,” Patino said.

It was a five-minute encounter, but the words will stay with Holohan for a lifetime.

“That’s a gift,” Holohan said of Patino. “I think that’s definitely a gift.”