From Alvaro 88883:
I’m not going to write about the planes. Or the smoke, or the flags that came out afterward to hang from balconies as if to cover something up. Everyone has already written about that.
I’m going to write about 11:30 that morning, when nothing was falling anymore and the people of Manhattan walked north down the middle of the street, in silence, covered in a white dust that wasn’t dust. They walked because the trains weren’t running, and because standing still that day was dangerous for the mind.
Walking was the only thing that still made sense.
What nobody tells you is the sound that was missing. New York without horns. A city built for noise, gone suddenly quiet and that silence is what truly frightens, more than the fire. Fire is understandable. The silence of eight million people is not.
And there’s something almost no one says out loud: for a few hours, before the names were known, before the “MISSING” flyers went up taped to every corner of Union Square — wedding photos, birthday photos, people smiling without knowing that picture would be the last one anyone would ever have of them during those hours, everyone, without exception, called someone just to say “I’m alive.” Not “I love you.” Not “Take care.” Just that: I’m alive. As if that basic phrase had suddenly become the only thing worth saying.