Towers
towers
I worked ten blocks from the ground, which they called Zero.
The hotel was a refugee camp,
desperate, displaced denizens in the triangle below Canal Street.
A human tower before me collapsed:
a single mother named Kathleen.
I held her as she sobbed.
A shaking grief, as if a tree were shedding its leaves in violent protest against the unseen.
She later passed away, I learned, not from the event itself but from how she tried to cope with it.
Credentialed with a badge that gave access beyond the yellow police tape, we sat under a mushroom cloud for months.
Asbestos, steel, and glass.
The ash of human flesh, a ghastly cremation,
a reminder of the daily dialogue
between evil and terror written for the global stage.
Locally, the sidewalks maintained old cracks, filled with soot and sorrow; the shuffled rush of feet against them slowed as something more durable than concrete began to break.
Doors to restaurants and cafes were held open for others,
the city was overwhelmed, under siege at an underwater pace that held all as captives and equals.
2,996 stories of death were born that day.
Stories of tragedy.
Stories of humanity.
Stories of geopolitics.
Stories of loss and fear and exodus.
Stories of villains.
Stories of heroes in uniforms and plain clothes.
Stories of survival and hope and resilience.
Stories of towers made by man
and another not;
a tower of refuge and strength.
