The Traumas

THE TRAUMAS

have all come back, all of them.
All together at first,
like a lost tribe of children
gathering at a fragile border.
Sequentially, then, after the first jolt,
tumbling by in small groups,
like miners widening a chasm
inch by foot by inch:
Looking up at my father’s distorted face,
his roundhouse right to my left temple:
best friend under the wheel of a school bus;
my grandmother shaking loose from her life;
cornered on the subway stairs at midnight;
emergency rooms, one after the next;
a surgery, another, then another and another.
Yes, they’ve all come back
as if decades hadn’t passed,
rising up from a distant plain,
annexing territory within my borders,
swarming through
my back, arms, and legs,
orphans demanding recognition,
cleaving my heart.
They poured across the border
on 9-11 for all of us,
through flames and cries and soot.
Bruised and ragged,
they all came back,
clawing through locked doors,
tumbling through all of us,
hauling their buried selves
into implacable light,
begging us to close this chasm
inch by foot by inch.
*For all the families and volunteers at
Pier 94, FEMA’s Family Center for victims
Of 9-11, NYC, Fall 2001