9eleven

This day belongs to those who, even now, wake up every morning swimming desperately against the relentless, hydraulic sucking of grief. To those who lost a Someone. I was a witness, we all were, to the horror and the fear of that September Tuesday. To the television screens painted red and grey. To the unsettled afterdays without laughter. And in small background ways the ramifications continue to touch us all, though likely only pricking our conscience when the cold slate of an airport floor reaches our bared toes. But to those with the swallowing, to those with the emptiness that will never be filled…what can we say? We don’t know. But we know. We know that whatever loss the rest of us suffered, even if it means the loss of the Known and the Secure – even if it means the loss of Humanity itself – will never eclipse the loss of a mother’s only son, or a sister, or a brother, a mommy, a daddy, a daughter, a love. Thus is the cruel calculus of the human heart. By proxy of your fallen you are the inheritors of the right to grieve however you want. For as long as you want. May the prayers of the millions weave a net sufficient to hold the heads of you few today. God bless.