Smoke and Fuselage

Watching a re-broadcast of the planes smashing through the World Trade Center three hours after the fact in California

Listening to Jean shell-shocked and an alien, vulnerable Manhattan: the sounds of screaming, sirens and an explosion that turned out to be the second tower collapsing before her cell went dead

Forgetting my parents' phone number

My mother crying when I finally remembered it

My father watching with his coworkers as planes detonated several skyscrapers over

Cubby Selby crying at the podium several days later, reading a tribute to his firefighter friend

A woman in my playwriting workshop deciding to begin a play about the plight of Afghanistan women that same week

Tony saving me seats away from her and the constant television replay of plane approaching, plane smashing, plane approaching, plane smashing at the bar after class that entire semester

My father and brother walking the Brooklyn Bridge with thousands of others in defiance of Al Qaeda

Arguing with people who felt it was fashionable to hate on men and women who simply got up and went to work one day for being part of "the imperalist conspiracy"

Arguing with people who felt it was fashionable to invade Muslim nations and kill civilians for no clear reason and with no clear strategy

Watching on television via sanitized, Space Invader-like graphics, when they actually did it

A thin trail of smoke.