There is a wound,
black as a cave and burning,
Smoke, and then people, pour out.

Look up, up
beyond the roar of metal
beyond the seething, traumatized pixels
that clutch their ******* set out to sag with milk and blood.
beyond how far your eyes will naturally go,
and you can see it-
the flap of a purple tie
(his son insisted on it)
and that was her sister’s green dress
(they wore the same size in everything).
small and out of the blue
they plummet as children.
so we the people or as we were later titled bystanders
want to hold them in our arms
we want to grab them out of the sky, yes,
grab them with those awful thoughts of belonging.
that you ought to be here, with me
on this ground that will inevitably
lead to homes that haven’t used up
all their printer paper on fliers.
home, not the sound of a car crashing
into another car except
we know it’s you and the pavement
and it’s all right if we can’t scrub all of it from our heads and faces, just please try to be down here with us, walking sometime tomorrow and
19 years from today
same old same old
New Yorkers pounding the concrete
upright, wearing our dress shoes
with a shirt we bought after we somehow
were all walking the day after that and our
minds were still spiraling the shaky little walking path we made
around the first woman who just wouldn’t
stop falling and bursting open
falling and bursting open
and falling and falling open again.


jump into the promise that
i will try to catch you.
even if it’s on the flip side, baby,
just please trust that i’ll be standing,
rippling in blue,
right where you need me to be.