A song unbidden

On that day when the world changed seven years ago today, on a crisp clear Tuesday morning when tiny dark objects drifted down from the windows of the burning World Trade Center to fall, fall, with agonizing slowness to the ground so far away, a song came into my head.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to ram my fists through the huge windows on the side of our building and scream out my rage to the rest of the world, scream with a voice that would topple buildings and shatter glass and bend steel for miles around, scream until there was nothing left to scream with. I saw blood, and flames. I wanted to be up to my elbows in gore, to tear out throats and smash in faces. I wanted to kill. All those people. All those people. And this song forced its way into my consciousness.



Alice in Chains, "Don't Follow"

My mind replayed endless loops of the bodies falling, the bodies, graceful, buoyed up by air, hitting terminal velocity, drifting down Hey, I ain't never coming home like heavy snowflakes, like leaves made of flesh, the flames, the smoke, the I can't meet you here tomorrow bodies, all those people, all those people, the flames and the smoke, smoke black with burning body fat and muscle and roasting bones drenched in jet fuel Say goodbye don't follow, Misery so hollow and I wanted to kill and I saw flames and I saw blood and I wanted to scream and
home
the bodies falling
take me home
drifting down
take me home
all those people
take me home
(I ain't never coming home)
take me home
(all those people)
and tomorrow the sun would rise and we would roll up our sleeves and do the things that needed to be done and get on with the business of running our lives as best we could, heal the injured and count the dead and know that there would be many, many more to follow
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved
and we were the living, and we would go on living, and we would do our best with the life left to us and
Say goodbye, don't follow.
and we would remember. We would remember. We would never forget.