Nine Eleven Sleep Alone Why

September 11, 2001

Nine Eleven Sleep Alone Why

Cliffside Park High School. Cliffside Park, NJ

It was a magnificent fall day in late summer. It is less than 8 miles from the school to the World Trade Center. We can see the Towers from the roof.

I was in the main hallway when I met Jackie, a social studies teacher. She said the news had reported a plane flew into one of the Towers. My first thought was remembering that a plane had once hit the Empire State Building, but I needed to continue my day as everyone was doing.

When the second plane hit the other Tower, our day stopped. TVs on in every classroom. Then Jackie told me that a Tower had collapsed.

“You mean the part above where the plane had hit.” How could a building like that actually collapse. Completely collapse.

Parents started to call. Parents came in. Parents brought their children home.  The safety of home?

Nine Eleven Sleep Alone Why

Why?

I saw a mother picking up her daughter. Both crying. A clear day had become a mental fog. Not knowing what to say, but knowing I should say something, I cliché’d: “It’ll be OK.”

It wasn’t. The son, the brother, was in one of the Towers. His body never found. Why?

Nine Eleven Sleep Alone Why

Job interview

Our son was in the city that day for a job interview.

Downtown.

He later told us that when he entered the building he could see the Towers. When he left the building, the Towers were gone. He finally got across the river and met us in a shopping mall’s completely empy parking lot. Stores closed. He was with one other person, a young woman in similar straits.

Our days became an occasional waft of burning smell and an eerie silence until fighter jets suddenly and alarmingly screeched overhead.

Nine Eleven Sleep Alone Why

Sleep Alone Why

as the sun was set and the pieces of light touch your hair perfect love come softly with the dawn, the dawn city once full of people desolate, is desolate we look back in to the ruins where we played at least we were together holding hands flying through the sky at least we were together holding hands flying through the sky skytouch your hand you touch the back of my hand so many empty nights just waiting for this, for this standing there all heading downstream unsteady island we hear nothing, nothing at least we were together holding hands flying through the sky at least we were together holding hands flying through the sky skyat least we were together holding hands flying through the sky at least we were together holding hands flying through the sky at least we were together holding hands flying through the sky at least we were together holding hands flying through the sky sky