Member-only story
September 11th, 2021:
Twentieth Anniversary of the Attack on New York City
I was on her front porch swing, Mariah inside, preparing for work. Her roommate and I smoking American Spirit cigarettes as she drank coffee. The mood was perfect. The air breathed itself into our bodies. We were cradled by reminders of every one of life’s perfect days but didn’t yet know. Summer was waning in Appalachia, and as Frost’s Gold slipped away, the mid-morning shadows cast the perfect canopy of green and going.
I had a missed call from Ras Al and voicemail on my flip phone. I connected and listened:
“P.twa — I don’t know, man. I just saw it on the… well, it’s all over the news. They’re sayin’ a plane crashed into one of the Twin Towers. They don’t know. But somebody said it was a big plane, like a commercial jet or somethin’. Anyway, one love, brother. Talk soon. Yes.”
I flipped the phone shut. “Son of a bitch,” I kinda mumbled. I pulled on the cigarette looking at my feet on the painted porch below as they dragged my swinging to a slow halt. I looked at Anis and said: “That was Al. He said a plane crashed into one of the Twin Towers, they don’t know the full…”
“What?” she asked, half sounding in disbelief, and half like she knew I couldn’t have said what I just had.
