14 years ago today.
And listening to all the teachers
Run, pale faced and murmuring,
Like frantic chickens.
I remember being happy to not have to work on math.
I remember being happy to get to go home early.
I remember my mom
Sitting on the stairs in front of a yellow
Barn-roofed house
Trying not to break down.
I remember not understanding.
And I remember trying to find the right facial expression
Somewhere in between what I should feel
And whatever feeling I was having that I didn’t have a name for
As my mom sat and tried to explain what happened
And how and why someone would pilot a plane
Into two towers in New York city.
I guess I was lucky in a way
That I didn’t lose someone.
But I think everyone lost something
I lost my innocence.
I lost my belief that I was safe in my room.
I had nightmares and dreams that a plane crashed into my room
While I was in my bed.
I learned of nuclear bombs and couldn’t sleep
Because I couldn’t stop feeling like my sheets were fire and radiation
Like my own atoms were splitting in the fallout zone.
I lost thinking that our family didn’t need a rifle
And suddenly I didn’t care about monsters in the closet or under my bed
Because whatever was coming for me couldn’t be stopped by my teddy bear.
Even as years passed, I found myself trying to reason with death
And scream life into people a hundred miles away and six feet under.
Now every eleventh of September I feel like a ghost walking among ashes
Silently watching the world burn around people who don’t see fire
But I know the ethereal sense of displacement today doesn’t just exist within myself.
We all feel it. Everyone old enough to remember.
And none of us will ever forget.