Today is September 11. Before 2001, It was always just a day like any other: someone's birthday, someone's wedding anniversary, or the day of any number of random occurrences throughout time but has now seemingly forever become the day we all became somber and deeply mournful at once in America and much of the world. There has been so much said about why it happened, how it happened, outside jobs, inside jobs, Yet, on that day, I felt most of us were incontrovertibly unified. My particular story involves family and friends, but I don't—in any way—wish to make my personal story bigger than the day.
The first draft and iteration of the following prose poem was written in 2006 and re-edited in 2007, and I've finally decided to permanently change the timeline to "so many years since" where it will stay. It is a response to health concerns post 9-11. I wrote it as an advocacy piece in defense of those affected most severely. Since that writing, there has been hope, yet the poem still stand as a worthy testament to those lost and those still dealing with health concerns.
"We Are Lower Manhattan"
It’s been so many years since those towers fell and we still smell the bodies, the ash, the twisted steel, florescent lights and computer screens, the fiberglass, and broken windows turning to broken hearts—and those hearts are heard beating less and less, becoming fewer and fewer—burdened by their having to support collapsing lungs and silenced tongues covered in chemical compounds of asbestos and fingers. Athletic children with asthma just can’t stand the strain of baseball anymore. A formerly happy teenaged girl is now horrified by the smell of the perfume her grandmother gave her at her sweet sixteen. She is green and vomiting from tiny molecules. She lay sick in her bed for days on end. Our pastor can’t speak as vigorously as he used to. He has to leave little pregnant pauses where his fire used to be. The blue collars in town are a little grayish- blue now and the woman next door may have Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
And we want to run away, but some of us don’t have any breath left to run, to scream! I remember they said it was safe, “Go shopping...” and whatnot.” Breathe the air...." We asked for masks but they never came. My daughter is getting sick of her school because she is sick of hearing stories of people being sick. The neighborhood doesn’t feel right and we want to. We want the doctors to have answers to our cancers and failing lungs and ash filled throats as many of us wait to join our bothers and sisters in that ash. We are tired of government assurance. We need insurance to pay bills for the right pills to ease our sorrows. Faith just isn’t enough anymore. Why do we feel this way? Most of us weren’t even there that day! They said it was safe and most of us knew better, but we trusted them. We don’t want the terrorists to win but they are! And here we are living here to die, dying here to live with the aftermath as it keeps calling us everyday.
Author's note: This piece was written as my response to health problems arisen out of the aftermath of the events of 9-11; however, today some hope and help has come about through both government intervention and legal action through the years and also now has given way to an irrepressible and stirring memorial at its site.
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