For those who perished on September 11, 2021

It was a sun-filled morning
I remember my shock
my horror
my disbelief.

I remember teaching at the university
asking for donations of blood.
There was no need.
The victims vanished
into smoke and ash.

My sons safe—
Madison and San Francisco.

My oldest called the following day.
His college roommate, Todd, never came home.
A trader for Cantor Fitzgerald,
his office, the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

Dead at twenty-five,
dead because he came to work on time.
We came together the days that followed.
To support those who grieved,
we all grieved.

Today’s enemy is within,
An acid divides.
Let us unite,
in honor of those we lost that sun-filled morning.

Let us remember children without their parents,
parents without children
spouses who dine alone.

Let us resolve to solve today’s dilemmas together.

Migrating with the hummingbirds, Susan (Sue) Schwartz Twiggs spends half time in the Wisconsin woods and half in the Arizona desert. Themed poems are her break from revising a middle grade novel-in-verse based on the childhood experiences of a Holocaust survivor.