September 11, 2021

On this 20th anniversary of 9/11, I've been reminiscing about that day. I was living in the Bronx at the time, and was teaching at Queens College, CUNY, that morning. The building where I was teaching was at the western end of the campus, on a slight rise. When one of my students came in at the break and told us what had happened, I cancelled the rest of the class, answered a few student questions, then walked outside and turned to my left. The Manhattan skyline was clear in the distance, and there was an enormous cone-shaped charcoal gray cloud rising from the southern end of the island. On such a crystalline late summer morning, it was a chilling sight.

Thankfully, my ex was starting work later that morning, since her train would have taken her to the WTC station on its way to Brooklyn. Since all the bridges were closed soon after the second plane strike, though, I couldn't get home that day, so I bunked down at her mother's place while she spent that night alone. I sat in front of the TV watching the news coverage all afternoon and evening, in a daze. I couldn't say how many times I saw the shot of the second plane hitting the tower. And in the subsequent years, so much heartache and loss...

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Some months back, I recalled hearing that day, and in the days after, about the number of people who leapt from the upper floors of the two towers before they collapsed, and the memory struck me as an apt metaphor for my personal situation at that time. The following poem, to appear in my forthcoming book, came out of it.