I am surrounded by metal arms

swooping forward in a salute to those who lost their lives.

Golden lights illuminate the tiny engravings,

hundreds of names and dates,

names and dates that mean the world to some.

The families who lost someone on the planes

seem to be there, standing with me.
Their cries drift by me in the breeze,

and settle on the benches.

We must not sit on these benches.

They already carry so much pain and loss,

and were they to carry more weight,

I fear they would crumble,

crumble like the shoulders of everyone on 9/11,

like my mom and aunt,

who lost their high school friend

to the attacks.

The darkness crashes down on me,

crushing the air from my lungs.

The light from the memorial is painfully bright:

a chaotic fire against an onyx sky.

When I close my eyes,

the fire bites at my eyelids,

I am still able to see them:

The names,

engraved into the benches,

engraved into my brain.

The names and the dates of those I don’t know,

But I won’t ever forget.

As soon as we disperse from our teacher,

I’m drawn to the water.

A wave passes through the shallow pool,

so serene and quiet.

Another wave ripples through the water,

suddenly books about Japanese-American families

being forced to leave their homes,

sell their stuff,

shipped off

like cargo to a camp,

flood my mind.

Another wave,

I stare at the crane,

frozen,

a crane that has two heads battling

two realities,

a Japanese past and an American future.

A crane that has one wing up and one wing down,

one wing broken and one wing perfect.

Stories of a child seep into my thoughts

whose life was forever changed

swept up in the violence

that swells alongside prejudice.

Another wave.

It used to be so serene and quiet,

yet still no one speaks.

From the clogged streets

of a bustling city,

a cutout corner of earth

gives visitors a quiet place:

a place to remember,

a place to shed tears.

My feet carry me

down the curved path toward

a shining black wall

covered in the reflections

of its surroundings.

On the outside, a

shadowed park;

on the inside,

a graveyard.

As I descend

farther into the wall,

my fingers trace

the individual letters

that merge into words.

Not words,

names,

thousands of names,

fanning out from the middle

like wings of a bird,

each name a feather

all able to fly as one.

I walk the path,

one end to the other,

seeing my reflection in the

black stone, smudged

by the cloud of foggy letters.

I walk slowly,

reading more names,

struggling to remember

those who I did not know

but mourn nonetheless.

The windows are down

and the wind breezes by my face.

The street is crowded by houses

that lie on top of one another.  

I see rippling lights,

flickering to a rhythm

that is not heard.  

The sky was pitch black

with small sparkles hardly seen.

I walk on the lumpy sidewalks

with gum stains which replay in my brain:

chalk stains, scraped knees, and our old swing set,

as I open the door to my childhood.

Memories are triggered by the smell

and they flourish in my mind.

Comfort waves over me

and I sigh a refreshing breath.

at home in The Dot.