… tuesday morning

… nine-eleven-two thousand and one. Where were you? 16 miles away, sitting in an 8^th grade math class, all we could see was the plume of smoke.

… attention all students, staff, and faculty …

… please report to the guidance office if …

… we don’t have any more information …

… everyone else, please carry on …

Radios crackled into frequency and panic flooded the rooms, bounced off of walls, bombarded eardrums. TVs were wheeled into classrooms, the cafeteria, anywhere and everyone gathered to watch as terror struck a nation. People ran, screaming through the haze of residue, sirens blared as rescuers disappeared into the chaos—and then the first tower fell.

Somehow, the world went mute. Or maybe just the TVs did. Either way, everyone’s history was changed forever …

Final Flight

an explosion of cries

heard around the world

with an echo of laughter audible in the background

without warning

you evaporated into eternal ashes

a cloud of dust seen from miles away

one by one

you all held hands in the sky

as you watched the world of terror beneath you unfold

you didn’t have time to say Goodbye

no I Love You’s before the walls and floors crumbled

the fire swallowed everything whole

mixing you with the bodies of those in the other tower

and the passengers on those planes

collapsing everything into a pile of

newly tangible lost dreams and battered souls

you danced with raging flames

if only for a second

before you became the very air that we now breathe

lining the lungs of those

no longer scared to inhale and take a breath

the weight of the dead is heavy

yet easily carried in the wind

to be taken in by the melting pot of Americans

and to cross oceans reminding nations

of the casualties of war