Flowers for Amy

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I plant yellow pansies for Amy every day in dry rocky trowel holes beside a granite marker where a beautiful young woman does not belong. On bended knee: I smile, I sob, I plead, I pray. I shriek to God to make reality go away: I do not understand the cruelty of man. Amy, when I talk to you and you do not respond, I know it is because you are not really in this place. You are not here under this chiseled stone. You are not there in the Towers, burning ceaselessly. You are particles in the air. You are nowhere: you are everywhere I remember. You are an unwilling part of history: immortal for your death by terrorists, killed by ideology and disdain. Exceptional in life, beloved, adored, treasured, the world will forever remember your horrible end: unimaginable atrocity raining down on millions compelled to watch, mesmerized, with ash encrusted faces; torment endured by you in that burning room. I plant flowers for Amy because she was young and beautiful and deserved a lifetime of flowers; she was my son's beloved, his future, my grandchildren, my friend. And it is all that I can do for her now. She just went to work on that beautiful autumn day. The sky was baby blue; white clouds billowed overhead, like snowy mountains hiding disaster on the other side. In moments, evil would pierce those perfect clouds with raging fire, smothering smoke and twisted steel cascading down upon a horrified world. Amy giggled, unawares that she would soon die smothering with friends and smoldering screaming strangers. I plant flowers for Amy every day because she did not deserve to be in that place: to die for the sins of countries and politicians, to suffer unmerciful persecution, to be in charge of life and death decisions for others, to fail because she was above the flaming airplane, to be trapped in steel and concrete with blocked exits, with people plunging from windows to escape agony, to have the floor collapse beneath her feet. Amy did not choose to die with love and dreams cradled in her arms, above exploding clouds in Windows on the World: rising to Heaven with thousands of inadvertent heroes, forever seared into our collective memory.