We could not unsee.

It was a terrorist attack, but we took it personally. It evicted us from our school.

For a couple of months, we attended the late shift at Brooklyn Tech, 2 to 7pm or something like that.

Dark fell fast at Brooklyn Tech. It was not our place.

Our place was a triage center now. Our cafeteria, our theater, our gyms —

The parents association was fighting with the principal was fighting with the Board of Ed was fighting with the governor — about whether it was safe for us to go back.

We just wanted — to go back. To be an ocean of teenagers flowing up Chambers Street and over the West Side Highway by way of a bridge built just for us. The JMZ, the 456, the NR, the ACE, the 123: the trains drew us from all over the city, deposited us on Chambers. From there we flowed to Stuyvesant —

The center of our universe. Never mind the barges docked at the foot of the school, loaded with debris —

The PTA said the theater was full of toxic dust, they said all the chairs had to be re-upholstered. They said HEPA filters they said —

It was our place. It was dirty in a different way. We made out, there. Eavesdropped on rehearsals for plays and concerts we never attended, only used as alibis. Hooked up, broke up, started up again —

We’re married now. In our living room we have two copies of the 2003 yearbook. Tucked inside it, a glossy special edition magazine published by the school newspaper, with photos of people falling —

falling or jumping? —

from towers that too would fall. Knees knocked out from under them.

The EPA had set up contraptions in the hallways, lunar landing modules but skinnier, spindlier, like praying mantises, to measure the air quality. We got used to them, echolocated around them; if our huge backpacks knocked them, it didn’t register. Nothing compared —

Every day two guys in orange safety vests came into my precalculus class, took a reading, recorded particles per million on their clipboard.

We stopped seeing them.

Did not stop seeing —

people jumping, falling.

Even if we hadn't seen —
or if we saw but didn't know what we were seeing —

we could not unsee.