literature

We Are Lower Manhattan

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Literature Text

It’s been so many years since those towers fell and we still smell the bodies, the ash, the twisted steel, florescent lights and computer screens, the fiberglass, and broken windows turning to broken hearts—and those hearts are heard beating less and less, becoming fewer and fewer—burdened by their having to support collapsing lungs and silenced tongues covered in chemical compounds of asbestos and fingers. Athletic children with asthma just can’t stand the strain of baseball anymore. A formerly happy teenaged girl is now horrified by the smell of the perfume her grandmother gave her at her sweet sixteen. She is green and vomiting from tiny molecules. She lay sick in her bed for days on end. Our pastor can’t speak as vigorously as he used to. He has to leave little pregnant pauses where his fire used to be. The blue collars in town are a little grayish- blue now and the woman next door may have Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

And we want to run away, but some of us don’t have any breath left to run, to scream! I remember they said it was safe, “Go shopping...” and whatnot.” Breathe the air...." We asked for masks but they never came. My daughter is getting sick of her school because she is sick of hearing stories of people being sick. The neighborhood doesn’t feel right and we want to. We want the doctors to have answers to our cancers and failing lungs and ash filled throats as many of us wait to join our bothers and sisters in that ash. We are tired of government assurance. We need insurance to pay bills for the right pills to ease our sorrows. Faith just isn’t enough anymore. Why do we feel this way?Most of us weren’t even there that day! They said it was safe and most of us knew better, but we trusted them. We don’t want the terrorists to win but they are! And here we are living here to die, dying here to live with the aftermath as it keeps calling us everyday.
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