The Things We Write When We Are Young

The things we write when we are young, and wish to be important. The things we write because we cannot make sense of what we see in terrible moments when the safety of adulthood fails us. The things that are too real to comprehend. The things that become dim and somewhat surreal, abused and exploited. The things we think about in passing when a low-flying jet dots the horizon. The things we wish. The things we know. The things we can never know.

9/11/2002 Entry
We are at Ground Zero, in New York, my mother and I. It is June, 2002.   
 
My face pressed against a cold metal gate; I thought I smelled the salt of a thousand tears seeping into my skin.
Though the summer heat pounded, the fence remained cool to the touch. It was deep, this scar. I could see the layers of subway ruined, six or seven stories of floor barely in tact from the fall. Metal beams were hauled away, and a solitary flag hung by a cross of steel. Tiny, it was, compared to the damage surrounding it. I thought Ground Zero to be smaller, the size of a few football fields. I thought the destruction not so massive as shown on the flashing television screen. I thought wrong. Eyes jaded to modern movie effects, I was shaken. It's more than I could have feared. 
My tears joined those staining the brutal ground, dripping slowly onto the fence guarding the unguarded. 
A child hugs his mother's hand next to me, and asks, "Why are you crying?" 
I look at him, as his mother wipes her own tears and says, "Remember it. This is history." 
I part through the crowd to cling to my own mother's hand.