- I was looking uptown, the day so clear I could almost see
- my building there, in the Bronx, way up the A line, and the school.
- I was saying a prayer that the first day of second grade
- was going well for Eduardo, when I saw the plane.
- The sky was always full of planes,
- but this one, this one was all wrong,
- not flying where the others did.
- Help them, Madre de Dios,
- something is terribly wrong.
- It came at us, low and straight, on purpose.
- I saw the belly as it hit above us. I saw it
- and all the windows shattered.
- I could not see Luisa but I could hear her
- screaming, at the desk next to mine
- in the huge space where the data clerks worked,
- on the floor below the brokers.
- I clear my eyes and shout at her
- Luisa take my hand!
- She cannot hear or see me.
- I use my sweater to wipe away the blood
- on both our faces. I think she is hurt very badly.
- I push open a stairway door, pulling her behind me.
- People are coming down from above,
- burned people, sobbing, stumbling.
- Step down, Luisa, step down.
- So much smoke it's hard to see,
- but I feel the metal rail with my hand
- And Luisa's hand with the other,
- wet, soft, cold, it does not hold on,
- like Eduardo when he is very very tired.
- We go down and down,
- with people pressing all around us.
- She falls, I pull her up.
- Step down, Luisa, step down.
- But she can barely move.
- I move her through a door into a quiet place,
- empty and beautiful, letters on the mahogany desks,
- coffee in a china cup.
- She wants to rest in the soft blue chairs
- but we must not stay.
- We are making dark marks
- on the thick cream carpet.
- I think she is hurt very badly.
- Step down, Luisa, step down.
- Firemen push past us, climbing up with tanks of air.
- They look at us and shout Keep going!
- There are medics in the lobby.
- Keep going down. Hurry!
- She says she can't go on,
- she must sit on the stairs.
- But there are too many people,
- they will step on you, they will fall on you.
- Luisa wants to push through another door, to find soft chairs,
- to rest and then go back up to our desks,
- back to our work, back to our lives.
- She does not understand that she may be hurt very badly.
- Stand up, Luisa, we must go down.
- The stairway shudders and I am falling.
- There is nothing to hold,
- to keep us where we are.
- Everything is falling.
- There is nothing to hold that is not falling.
- I am the falling, the roar, the cloud,
- I am the force of the earth as it halts the fall,
- I am the fires that begin to burn, there, there and there.
- I am the Mother mourning for her sons and daughters.
- In my massive silence,
- only the twittering sounds of the firemen's jackets,
- telling their brothers where they've fallen.
- They come, hundreds, looking for them, for us, in the ruins,
- thinking they have not found us, but they have.
- Flesh into smoke, smoke into flesh,
- our bodies powder their faces, line their lungs,
- the seekers of the missing, breathing as they dig,
- looking in vain where we'll never be found.
- Luisa thinks she's back at her desk, there in the air.
- Not understanding what has happened
- she reads the pages, keyboards the numbers,
- frets about her children and if she'll get a raise.
- She is surrounded, above, below, and all around,
- by hundreds more who also do not understand.
- Stop now, Luisa.
- Step away from your work and into Holy Mother's arms.
- What held you there is in the rescuers' bodies now
- and in their prayers of grief.
- Step away, good daughter, you are free now to step away.
