When Nothing Makes Sense and You Can't Look Away

There's a lot more to this topic that I haven't been able to coalesce into a comprehensible writing just yet, so this could very well be only half or a third of what it may become one day. Most of what remains is exactly how the day influenced the next nine years of my life (world outlook, political feelings, educational priorites, etc). However, I've been able to dig into my memories of September 11th, and put this piece together.

Two towers soon to fall.

Silvery grey twins shimmering bright in morning’s light, dealt matching blows, left with fatal haunting holes. Millions of hands covered as many mouths but no one shielded their eyes. The City that Never Sleeps left silent in sunlight. Speechless, at a standstill, the sudden strikes start a citywide shock. Replays of planes, passengered projectiles, colliding into these, these steel giants, shock my senses. Only eleven, I’m watching death live on television.

Six-hundred miles off, my teacher’s cowering, cornered with her phone; with silent streaming tears, metronomic sniffles, she’s shook by the scene, trying and trying to call her friend who lives in New York City. She leaves voicemails to no avail, hoping it’s not goodbye.

Tongue-tied by it all, the anchors sit in awe. The cameras just roll. Grotesque plumes rise high, grow grey, and mix with sky’s blue. They don’t die for dozens of days; they hang without fade, weeks ‘til they dissipate. Meanwhile, men fall fast to seal their fate. Chuteless skydivers descending at terminal velocity to the city streets while cameras record without skipping a beat. It all feels wrong; I can’t comprehend the terror of two towers smoldering in ruin, but still standing. Common knowledge suggests two severed spines cannot stand long. I’m not alone in this, my social studies class is a confused mess; the horror before them is too abstract. For developing minds, the impact of this attack will come later, creep in, seep into them in time, when wives, widows, the like, morn the lost lives on nightly newscasts for months on end. When the final figure hits 2,976, they’ll finally feel fear.

North and South, brother buildings; architectural wonders of simple design, built to shine and stand as the symbol of Us, came down.

Twin births, twin deaths, only half-an-hour apart. Our monstrous monoliths, our powerful pillars of financial mastery and might, came down.

Those dual representatives of our will, our fight, assembled as means to say that capitalism is right, came down.

Those sterling structures, they fell for years.

Cameramen fled on foot amid citizens’ repetitions of Oh my God. Perfect collapses into Lower Manhattan happened and the people ran like Pamplona. The pursuing plume hid the bulls.

A school-bell rang six-hundred miles away telling me to pack up. Third-hour awaits. I didn’t see a minute more the rest of the day.

For two years after, I was stoically phobic and suffered private fits of fear; occurring whenever I would be outside and the whistles of robins or the breeze of midday would swim by, a foreboding thunder of whirring mechanics interrupted, roaring many miles high. I’d become dumbstruck, Staring at sky. My attention would snap, priorities would swap, and in an instant, my neck would crane, eyes looking up. I’d see another in the making: A terror attack, a nightmare from which there is no awaking.

In a second of precise, precocious estimation I could measure altitude, direction, and just how much the engines made me shake, all to quell my fright that this American Airliner above was nothing to fear, just a typical flight. Every plane that passed by made me hold my breath and hope, made me think of those that’d died, ‘til it flew out of sight. If one flew too close, I’d run inside fast, check online news sites looking for breaking news of: More hijacked aircrafts. That habit hasn’t left me, The panic’s never fled. I’m still attune to low-flyers and the resultant nagging dread.

Only eleven, I saw mass murder unfolding unedited on TV, and I credit it to molding the present me. That Tuesday morning, I was a sixth-grader watching something hard to come to grips with. There are things I would not grasp until well into my teens: The totality of that terrorism, the loss of those lives, and how the news could mimic a bad dream. Now, however, I hold close to that memory, that day, and without fail, when pressed to recall all those scenes and sounds I keep vaulted so tight in my mind’s walls, I can’t help but cry. I feel the shivering grief, every ounce at once, raining down relentlessly like the bodies and debris from those two towers. I feel the loss of 3,000 in a rousing bout of synchronized sadness.

The formative morning in my budding life, the motivation of my growth, why I’ve developed into this self, has its roots in shared tragedy. Given the paralyzing pain, the cynicism it created, the heartbreak it brings, I hope it’s understandable, and that it’s no real wonder, why it took ten years to talk of this.

The News in Sunday Morning's Room

You start with the surface.

Grecian eyes, tooled away centuries ago by masters of their craft; artisans awaiting just the right woman worthy of their work. They’re now socketed centerpieces of a visage organized by architects building off flawless designs. Cheekbones bouncing light, blushing from your forwardness, highlight her fearful symmetry. Her roaring bob spins violently with the turn of her head, imitating a Mediterranean night’s shade and daunting nature. It frames her masterpiece; her impossibly remarkable face that before tonight, only dreams had conceived.

Let the marriage die. You knew her once as a creation of gods so bent on beauty that they deprived her of humanity. The gods bore into her mind that no cost could be too high to protect what so many had suffered to shape, sculpt, and erect. A self-defense device lie deeply imbued: avoid all abuse to her immaculate figure. Vanity, sans sanity.

Move in with her twenty-seven dates, public outings, picnics, and parent meetings later. You lie with her on a Sunday, happily entangled on a tiny mattress in the room with a view; one that begs and pleads to be filled with furniture.

If I told you ‘I love you,’ you wouldn’t believe me, would you?

Her voice is a choir; mezzo-sopranos in harmony, smooth as whiskey, hypnotic in delivery. Her “good morning” is a concise vocal concerto that, when coupled with the flash of her eye bulbs, is akin to a jazz piece. An audiovisual inspiration.

I could never believe it, You whisper without doubt.

That’s why I love you, You hear through closed eyes.

Her voice’s conductor composes those three words so they’ll reverberate in your head’s echoing halls ‘til the crescendo collapses. Her white tank-top of purity clings only half as tightly as your arms around her. The Sunday morning light crawls onto you two, as you do unto her.

You go on the first date.

She’s an Egyptian queen revived for your marveling while you share time in fine Italian dining. She shines for you, elaborating on her hopes and list of aspirations as her chins sits upon her limp wrist. Her lips press inward, instinctually. You quell your stutter when she wants to know all about your life and your hopes. Everything you tell her is given full attention, from your miseries to your gratitude to all those who waited, prayed, as you squandered months of life and possibilities in half-way homes and that one clinic that causes you to cringe.

She sympathizes, smiling sublime comfort that soothes old wounds.

You were a father for 77 hours. She tells you afterward of her decision, with emphasis on her. Her bob becomes the bordering to a shimmering TV set turned to the devastating live news announcement; a close-up of a gorgeous, remorseless, anchor, delivering the details of death in taciturn tedium, as if it were the grocery list being read. When news of a dead child is told to the tune of a Charlie Parker set, with such a luminous being the source of the broadcast, you don’t know how to react. You leave to find a way, but only uncover a six-iron; it allows for a voluminous and crashing catharsis, all but ruining the walls of Sunday morning’s room. She tries to calm you down. Amid your irritating glaze of tears, your misplaced rage, you don’t see her in time to halt your broken-hearted swing.

The damage entails a coincidental twenty-seven stitches.

You ask for her name, cocking your head pointlessly, while your winning grin saves you.

Elizabeth, Her symphony says.

Her skin is soft to the eye’s touch; an unblemished milky landscape untarnished by man’s explorations, but demanding to be appreciated. You buy her a Manhattan that’ll sit unsipped. Her hand becomes your fingers’ first of many adventures on her surface. It feels like the fine side of satin, as suspected.

You find her in the bedroom. She doesn’t say sorry, and neither do you. Allowing her defenses to fall, she sheaths her dagger, letting you sidle beside her. You share a short time seeing your different lives split off and shatter outside Future’s frosted window. You plainly explain, You don’t have to go.

Affections are shown just once more, before she storms out the door. Without hearing remorse sung for you by her chorus, your life becomes punctuated by your old haunts and failings. Dirty alleys drenched in fluorescence: stage lights to your horrorshow. Your child’s now but a blip in your mind, Imagination’s cradle rocking it slow, never to know anything but its father’s mental confines. Stolen life defines it, courtesy of a mother unprepared and unreasonable, blessed with beauty, but not ready to wreck it. The woman of your dreams came to life and ruined it.

Sunday morning leaves for the afternoon shift. Locked in tight, two lovers exist before their rift. A draft drifts in. A chill spills inside, but you refuse to shift or make the lunge for the blanket on the floor.

You wouldn’t lift a lash.

The twin mattress, a purchase of thrift with disregard to space is the lovers’ last place where they embraced love’s gift.