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.

I was in sixth grade.
I was sitting at the lunch table with my friends, just talking amongst ourselves.
It seemed to be just like any other day,
until I heard student after student being called to the office for "early dismissal."
My sister and I, and my best friend were three of the very few who did not get dismissed that day.
What happened between then and when I got home is a blur.
I can remember
not knowing what was going on;
I can remember
being so confused;
I can remember
the tears in my mother's eyes
as she watched the news.
I can very, very clearly remember
watching the T.V. that night after dinner,
and feeling an overwhelming sense
Of loss.

I was ten years old,
but I can remember
tragically watching our buildings burn.
I remember
seeing people jumping out of buildings
and falling to their deaths.
I remember
the clouds of smoke
that hung so heavy in the air
and that you could barely see anything
but rubble
and turmoil
and death.

But it was that day
at such a young age,
I would learn:
We are
The United States of America
and we proved
on that day
That "United We Stand"
is not just a phrase
that our country
throws around lightly.

The men and women
that were at Ground Zero that day
and the months that would follow
will forever remain
Unsung Heroes
in the hearts of every single American
that was alive on
September 11th, 2001,
and the generations to come
forever.

*Where were you, when the world stopped turning?