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Abecedarian: Twenty-Four Years Since 9/11

By Cheryl J. Fish

All those years ago, already twenty-four. We await the
Bright memorial, night sky filled with Tower beams.
Community kept us together. Then came
Disaster drills and protocols, homeland security to
Elicit reduced risk, anticipate threats.
Fresh pandemic excavations in recent years, desertion, and fear.
Glistening Freedom Tower appeared with its underground malls.
Honors for some, fresh horror for others.
Incarnations of loss and gain. Lawyers urging
Justice on Facebook and TV. File claims!
Kick up dates and witnesses that prove you were there.
Liquidate trauma into compensation, survivor's
Mental health fissures, illnesses, unexamined talismans.
No stopping hawkers hawking souvenir picture books of the attack
On the plaza with a beer garden and hipster food trucks.
Pretend this never happened.
Quietly summon unexplainable sorrow.
Rest in restlessness, time may desensitize jumpy
Sensations. Young folks have no idea what happened on 9/11.
Terrorism, not experienced first-hand or second, but through images.
Undimmed, ongoing smoke and toxins remain eternal.
Violence is as violence does.
What might have accumulated in our cells?
X-rays, storyboards of lost emissions.
Your city, a gorgon, a gyroscope.
Zinnias adapt. Pink and yellow blossoms.
Aftermaths blooming eternally.