Wake me up when September ends, lyrics implore, beneath a lonely chord. Twenty years have gone so fast, and yes, I’d rather we ring out the bells of spring,
as Billie Joe sings.
But it’s September once more, today the September day, breezy balmy blue like twenty years past, twenty years gone so fast. The innocent can never
last.
As witnessed that day, beamed into offices and homes across a land at one time invincible, impenetrable, beamed from a traitorous sky that rained fire and fury as screams slipped into silence to smolder
in history.
Twenty years gone so fast, and we gather in a field on this September day, an honorary air show for an appalling anniversary. We look to the sky from another remote field and wait for a roar
once more.
White-winged formation, in commemoration. Military might, silhouettes in flight, aerial achievements delight
—no-malice-no-menace-no-fright—
on this September day.
Pilots bent not on obliteration but veneration, admiration, for those who sacrifice—were sacrificed—
on that September day.
Noiseless moments tick, collective heads bow, before boom! We lift our heads skyward, eyes unblinking in a different awe, trained on Thunderbird F-16s among cumulus clouds
pillowy and pure.
The clouds that day, twenty years past, a puffy innocence that melted like cotton candy to tongue
beneath a kidnapped sun. Gone so fast … the innocent can never
… last.
We look above and remember those lost below a terror that tumbled, vibrations that ricocheted across a city, a country, thousands of souls. Today’s crowd feels vibration in our toes, our throats,
from a scream of steel wings.
We clap at barrel rolls as hearts beat double-time and the sky rains might and we remember when a sky
rained agony, an azure sky turned ashen as walls crashed in our city, our hearts and guts,
and we traded our cotton candy for boots on the ground.
An enemy from afar, those twenty years past, replaced today by an enemy
within: our streets, our neighborhoods, our Capitol’s marble halls.
Wake me up when September ends. Before September ends, I’ll wake my family, my neighbors, myself. Before September ends.
Before another January’s attempted insurrection can dawn.
Ann Kathryn Kelly writes from New Hampshire’s Seacoast region. She’s an editor with Barren Magazine, a columnist with WOW! Women on Writing, and she works in the technology sector. Ann leads writing workshops for a nonprofit that offers therapeutic arts programming to people living with brain injury. Her writing has appeared in a number of literary journals. https://annkkelly.com
