Watching them fly in
I never agreed with it
Too much emotion
The rejection said
I wrote something
After nine eleven
Watching them fly in
Not knowing
What they’d been leaving
Arriving in distress.
She had a brother
Working in the first tower
A place that I’d known
A place I’d been
She didn’t know
If he was living
The phone call came
And she smiled again
He was alive.
Long ago
As I walked home
I heard
I felt
The explosion
My classmates
Fathers, brothers
Uncles, men
Had been lost
We use that word
Too loosely.
Killed.
Too emotional.
What have we become?
Stone pillars
Wooden Indians
Vacant
People live
Vicariously
Just by television
I’ve lived in a time
That isn’t literally
Real or unreal
I write
About emotions
The connections
People, times and places
That are real.