9/11

Wondering if this will always feel like the weirdest day of the year.

It hits like unexpected bad news although we've heard it a thousand times already.

Longing to forget it, but desperate to remember.

Fire engines covered in ash and dust. Central park- our guess at the safest place to be- an absence of tall buildings, but even there every unfamiliar noise being terrifying. Humming planes vigilently patrolling the sky, but glared at by everyone below, to be feared as the enemy. Emails and 20c phone calls to the people I loved the most. Hotel lobbies, confused people and bags. Screaming to my mum in the hotel corridor, knowing that the sound wouldn't travel four-thousand miles to her ears, but incapable of doing anything else. Thinking 'this is it'. Lost. Being too afraid to sleep where I was, but helpless to get anywhere else. Stuck in a New York that was afraid, grieving, confused, angry, hurting, numb. The most heartfelt prayer I'd ever said until that point. The significant change in how I thought about life. The horrendous number that flashed accross TV screens and increased every minute, telling of the number of people missing. Every single one having a story, a home and a family. Stars and stripes and posters of lost faces on doors and walls and windows. Sirens, almost a constant background noise but one that was never habituated to. Running one afternoon because that's what everyone else was doing, but none of us knowing where we were running to or what we were running from. A greyhound bus being the ticket away from it all a few days later. The relief of being away and alive, but the strange feeling of being with people who hadn't been there. The man at the check-in deskwondering what it had been like, but unsure if there was a seat for me on the plane. Flying being the only way home, but the last thing anyone felt like doing.

The plan which had been to wake up early on the 11th, to leave my sleeping roomate and to go to the top of the world trade centre. Sleeping in that morning. Still not grasping what that means.

The photo of us grinning infront of the towers with the date Sept 10 2001 stamped in the corner.

The following summer, meeting and loving some beautiful children, mothers, wives and husbands who cried over the people they didn't see after that day. Watching them let go of balloons beside a lake in Maine. Messages carefully felt-tipped onto fifty white balloons. Staring upwards, hoping that the tiny white dots they were shrinking into wouldn't disappear.