A Choice Between Fire or Falling

I am not going to talk, in detail, as so many are, about what day it is today.

It is not because I have forgotten.

It is not because I am disrespectful.

It is not because I do not mourn; it is not because I am heartless; it is not because I am not patriotic; it is not because the terrorists have won.

It is because it is not my story to tell.

Did it affect me? Yes. Of course it did. I'm an American. I'm a native New Yorker. I had friends living in New York City at the time; one of them worked in the World Trade Center and got out just in time.

I was living across the country ten years ago. What I did that day is really of no consequence. Just one story, out of millions of stories. We all have them. You don't need to hear mine. It's not the missing piece in the tapestry. It's inconsequential. I did what anyone did, not living in New York City: I watched, and I despaired, and I wept. My timeline ten years ago was my own, but mirrored many others. I do not choose to share it, and I do not think you need, or care, to hear it.

It is not my story to tell, and not my place to tell it. I have no claim over the events ten years ago.

It does not mean I have forgotten them. They are just not mine, and I feel it would disrespect those who own them to lay claim to them.

The Names - Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.

A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,

And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,

I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,

Then Baxter and Calabro,

Davis and Eberling, names falling into place

As droplets fell through the dark.

Names printed on the ceiling of the night.

Names slipping around a watery bend.

Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning, I walked out barefoot

Among thousands of flowers

Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,

And each had a name --

Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal

Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.

Names written in the air

And stitched into the cloth of the day.

A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.

Monogram on a torn shirt,

I see you spelled out on storefront windows

And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.

I say the syllables as I turn a corner --

Kelly and Lee,

Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.

When I peer into the woods,

I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden

As in a puzzle concocted for children.

Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,

Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,

Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.

Names written in the pale sky.

Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.

Names silent in stone

Or cried out behind a door.

Names blown over the earth and out to sea.

In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.

A boy on a lake lifts his oars.

A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,

And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --

Vanacore and Wallace,

(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)

Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.

Names etched on the head of a pin.

One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.

A blue name needled into the skin.

Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,

The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.

Alphabet of names in a green field.

Names in the small tracks of birds.

Names lifted from a hat

Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.

Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

For the Falling Man - Annie Farnsworth

I see you again and again

tumbling out of the sky,

in your slate-grey suit and pressed white shirt.

At first I thought you were debris

from the explosion, maybe gray plaster wall

or fuselage but then I realized

that people were leaping.

I know who you are, I know

there's more to you than just this image

on the news, this ragdoll plummeting—

I know you were someone's lover, husband,

daddy. Last night you read stories

to your children, tucked them in, then curled into sleep

next to your wife. Perhaps there was small

sleepy talk of the future. Then,

before your morning coffee had cooled

you'd come to this; a choice between fire

or falling.

How feeble these words, billowing

in this aftermath, how ineffectual

this utterance of sorrow. We can see plainly

it's hopeless, even as the words trail from our mouths

—but we can't help ourselves—how I wish

we could trade them for something

that could really have caught you.