09/10/2017
Well, that day is upon us once more, and being human, we cannot NOT recall the events of that day and their aftermath. Like many people I was not personally a victim, but I know someone who was. I cannot hope to address their pain.
This poem came from a moment of video I saw on TV that day, the mental image has never left me, a snap shot of an aid worker comforting a guy, who just happened to be on the wrong street at the wrong time, a survivor.
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SURVIVOR
I stumbled along those streets,
the ones I had known all my life,
a powdered ghost
deafened by silence.
No longer safe, alive, happy,
my world was reduced to panic, fear, dread,
mouth, filled with gritty burnt flesh,
eyes, unable to not see what was before them.
My heart, racing to escape my chest,
And my legs, unable to support, much less carry,
I dropped the bag I had, never to reclaim it,
I lost the life I had, gone forever within a few short minutes.
No matter how hard I look,
I cannot find the me that I was before.
A uniform tried to comfort me, took me aside,
sat me on the curb, a child at a parade.
I recall the feel of the Red Cross blanket, its weight
both comfort and burden.
Tears scaled down my face
leaving trails in the kabuki death mask.
My eyes drew skyward, looking for the next plane.
The one that would drop a bomb,
the one that would kill us all.
Unsure of how I felt when it never came;
numb agony,
raging fear,
glad to be in one piece,
sick at the burnt bologna smell in the air.
The phone on my hip chirped -
a panicked bird in a leather cage.
On the ninth,
or ninetieth time,
I answered,
to hear that voice
of the one I loved.
I was alive.
