Ten years, a blink of the eye, and I am back calling my husband on 9/11....

Calling My Husband
on Tuesday, September 11, 2001  
Calling

him but no

answer on his

cell.
He should

have been at

work, but wasn't.

He had taken

a different route,

dropped off my

car at the mechanic,

gone in late,

had to take the train

into Penn Station

instead of Brooklyn,
had to push into the

subway downtown,

the A, always

too many people

at the World

Trade Center stop--
he hated subways,

too many, in too small

and hot

and claustrophobic

a box lurching

underground—

but then, he didn't like

heights either.


What everyone

remembers is how blue

the sky was.

How

perfect the day -- 


cloudless, crisp.

But otherwise

an ordinary Tuesday,

oh, a day to vote in

the primaries, still

an everyday Tuesday,

except that I couldn't

reach him --

not on his cell,

nor in his office.


A regular Tuesday,
except

that I was in Long Island,

and on the television,

planes were hitting

the World

Trade Center Towers.
I wanted to scream

out my office window –-. 



Later, that afternoon,back home,

his black suit,
(which he

never wore again),
hung stiff with sweat

and grey with dust,


debris and fear.


He had made it to his

downtown Brooklyn

law office just in time,

had the view

clear to lower Manhattan,

and the Twin Towers.

That Tuesday morning,
amid the acrid smell of

fuel and plastic and --

everyone who could was

hurtling over

the Brooklyn Bridge --
jamming into

the last LIRR train

to leave the station --

he could barely breathe –-

nobody knew what was going on;

except, men like him were

leaping off the

Towers --

into

blue

sky.


But he had

come home,

and others didn't –-

other husbands, fathers,

wives, mothers, sisters,

brothers, cousins, friends,

lovers, children—

didn't come home on that

everyday Tuesday in September,

a primary day, a day of clear blue skies.


Every September 11 since

I say a prayer for him

at my side, and

another prayer –

from the pit of my heart,

from the place where things

don't make sense, and never will,

a prayer

for all those ordinary

men and women,

who didn't come home.   

 --

Caroline Bock, 2011