Six Years Later

When September 11th rolls around each year, it reminds me that another anniversary of living in New York is creeping up on me. I moved here after the terrorist attacks, but only shortly after. I didn't experience the feeling of the air or the taste of the dust or the fear in the subways and on the streets. I saw what the world saw, watching the repeated videos of crumbling skyscraper and Red Cross volunteers between episodes of Seinfeld and Sex and the City.

After moving here four months later, I experienced September 11th an entirely new way. I revisited it through the eyes and the voices of those who had been a part of it.

It's happened so many times that a full grown New York City man with a Manhattan or Brooklyn accent sat, hunched over a bar that I was working, ordering a refill on his Jack and Coke or Jameson on the rocks, while tears silently streaked his face, his reenactment of the worst day of his life a little too difficult to finish. The horror I've heard. Some of the stories bring my lunch to the back of my throat, pull at the saltwater behind my eyes like a Paul Zindel novel to an eleven-year-old. I won't repeat them. They need not be relived.

I climbed to the rooftop of my building in the West Village tonight after dinner. It was a normal day and the night was no different, save the overwhelming stream of blue light piercing the sky like an unavoidable reminder of what once, only a few years ago, existed downtown. I took in the presence of the night's scar. Took a few photos. Thought of the men that openly cried in front of their bartender, unable to contain the horrific terror that brimmed their memories of that day. Prayed for the two thousand seven hundred and fifty two people that are no longer sharing this life with us because of what happened here in this city six years ago today.