Hot Knives Diving Into Butter

My eyes turned to the sky
At 46 minutes into the hour
Flashing backwards
Watching the biggest smoke and debris field
That I had ever seen
Crawl through the financial district
As if someone had yelled
“Last one out turns off the lights!”

I watched the sky
Like a one two punch
They fell
On buildings
Across parking lots and into command centers
And plowing through cow fields

Tried to reconcile reality
And separate it from the thought
That I was watching a movie
This wasn’t happening
But when I looked outside
From two thousand miles away
I could have sworn that I too
Saw the smoke on the horizon
Bellowing up like a thick fog
I could hear the sirens echoing
Down deserted streets
Where the panicked crowds
Took refuge and hid in corner stores

The images were like hot branding irons
Searing into our brains
Scared eyes peering through layers of dust and ash
Buildings crumbling into mushroom clouds
The Dogs searching
Among flags raised on bent metal beams
Printer paper
Tacked up everywhere
Like urban wallpapers of heartache
That asked if I had seen their daddy or husband
And the beautiful souls who turned into flying supermen
But who couldn’t escape the Earth’s gravity

At three past the hour
We are replaying
The images over and over
When another shockwave hit
A cruel doppelganger of horror
A mirror image of a gaping wound
Bleeding out
At thirty seven minutes past the hour
And then twenty six after that
The blow was complete
America had taken the form
Of Godzilla slowly falling
Reeling from Mothra’s last mighty blow
Landing with an earth shaking thud
Lifeless but not yet without life
In that moment
We seemed beaten

And things changed
By lunchtime
We all felt anger
Extreme sadness
Guilt
We had so many questions
But those who could answer them best
Were gone forever
Hiding in a locked cockpit
Engulfed in jet fuel flames
That slowly transformed
Into the flames of hell

We felt such uneasiness and dread
Faced with two thousand nine hundred and eighty six beating hearts
Being buried under ash and soot
Beneath the broken skeletons
of building ruins and airplane parts

We lifted from a dreamy and ambiguously deceptive slumber
We woke with anger at having been disturbed
We tried to go back to sleep
But we had to fix things first
We made mistakes
And other times had glorious successes
We laughed and we cried
Opened our hearts
And ensured that they could never be closed ever again
We started learning more about each other
Compassion and tolerance
Our differences and origins
And the strengths and powers
That could overcome our complacency

We learned how far we wanted to go to protect ourselves
And how far we wanted to go to protect others
We saw our sins and flaws
And that would ignite battles of their own
But it was far better to fight
Than to sleep in ignorance
We learned what was really important
And what was background noise

So every September 11th
Our eyes look to the skies
Four times in seventy seven minutes
We see a future that is brighter
Than the one we had envisioned
On September 10th
We may never stop expecting
Planes to drop from the sky
And alter our lives
We may never stop seeing them
Slicing through buildings
Like hot knives diving into butter
But through it we birthed a new nation
One that continues to honor
Those chosen to help wake us up
And gave up their lives to ensure
That life and love would renew itself
Within the breast of our Federation