11

September 11th,


When I was in eighth grade I didn’t know you. You were in Washington D.C playing with your brother and listening to Korn. I imagine you with chapped lips and black t-shirts. My dad would drive me to school. I would wear billabong hoodies and giant raver pants. I only spoke to my father, I painted my room purple. You didn’t have many friends, you were a minority at school, the only thing I ever read all of middle school was To Kill a Mocking Bird. My middle school class lost a student every year, plane crash in the mountains, lukemia...suicide. I think I still might have seen more beautiful things than you. I hear your a great baseball player, I know your dad makes you go to church every Sunday, he sits you down and explains what exactly your music is trying to tell you. And you don’t care. Your quiet, but you haven’t always been.

I guess I knew I diddn’t like you almost right away. I saw you playing in the street. It was snowing, your dad had shaved your head so close I could see the milk white of your scalp. And we did not talk, but we played P-I-G in the snow. I knew you weren’t from around here. On the morning of September 11th your father was working in the pentagon, my father was unemployed sitting in his basement. I got driven to school late, you got dropped off for the last time.

And I meet you again here now, my room is still purple, you still listen to Korn and I still don’t like you. But here I meet you ten years later and I fall in the love with the son of a man who didn’t know he had it coming.