written after 9-11

Shredded ’Normals’
I woke up late, rushed to prepare,
just another normal day.
a tear in my hose,
out of milk,
late for chapel.
Another normal day.
Watching my clock,
listening drowsily,
anxious to attend the first day of class.
just like any other normal day.
Called back to the chapel before class go to start,
wondering what’s going on...
did somebody die?
did one of us quit?
and all the other normal thoughts of an unexpected meeting
float through my mind.
”loved ones” he said, ”something’s happened”
”a plane’s hit a building and we’ve been attacked”
And my normal day, in my normal life, in my normal world
ceased to exist.
89
The day is a blur in my memory,
a whirlwind of events and activities
Gathered around the television
watching planes hit,
towers fall
the stronghold of our country engulfed in flames.
The antithisis of a normal day.
Called together once again,
we were sent out to serve.
Clad in jeans, storng boots, and tell-tale Salvation army shirts,
we headed for manhattan.
what was once a normal route was now a military zone.
armed guards waving us on and police saluting as the van crawled by.
on the bridge, we glimpsed the skyline, black and choked with smoke
a dark cloud replacing the pinnacle of the city.
I knew nothing would be normal on that day.
Standing at ground zero, i stared
open mouthed, at the burning pile of twisted metal
that once stood so majestically for all to see.
A fluttering peice of paper jolted me back to reality
drifting down from the sky, a bit of burned newspaper
floated into my hands
a weather report, with the 11th date
’it’s going to be a beautiful day’ it read.
And i thought, despite myself,
How ironic.
A normal article,
about a normal subject,
on what began as a normal day
now floated in an eerie psudo-normalness
in a new realm of normalcy.
we worked for hours,
hauling water,
serving food,
offering a shoulder to cry on
and then we began to head home,
walking slowly,
dragging ourselves down the street
as people lined the highway
holding candles
rasing signs
silently clapping in somber reverance
as we walked past.
They hailed us as heros...
Heros? us?
lord, i do not feel like a hero.
Just a dirty, dishevelled, exausted girl
who had done simply what seemed most natural.
there is nothing heroic about us....
it was unsettling, seeing the men and women
clad in dust masks
who were so thankful
just to see that we were there.
I wanted to disappear,
and couldn’t get back to the van fast enough.
i arrived back at my home,
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thankful that everything was just as i left it that morning
normal, just like always,
and yet somehow, profoundly different.
In the shower, i tried to wash away the stench
wash away the ash
wash away the pain
but as i stood there,
the emotion of the day overtook me,
and i sat
sobbing
on the floor of the shower
and i realized that my neatly packaged, normal life
was over
and that i would take nothing for granted
call nothing ’normal’
again.