suitcase

When I was a child
my parents use to have parties,
and every so often someone would ask
“where were you when JFK was killed?”
Or Martin Luther King Jr.
years before everyone knew
where they were on 9/11.
Then it became trivial.
No one wanted to remember where they were
when they found out 2951 people died.
They stuffed the memories away
along with the obituaries
of businessmen and
Firefighters,
and the soldiers that died years later.

My father was nine
when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated
I wasn’t even a concept
in my father’s innocent child mind.

I was 16,
a junior in high school,
on September 11th 2001.
Walking out of my first period class
When I heard the murmurs in the hallway about
a plane crash in New York.
By the time I got to second period the television was on,
and stayed on for every class there after
that day.
Students and teachers both mesmerized by history unfolding.
People cried a thousand miles away,
People pledged allegiance,
And vowed revenge.

Now,
10 years later
I am a grown man,
But I am still confused by what happened
And why
How is the world is so beautiful
And yet so filled with hate.
I want to say I love you
to every stranger I meet.
I want this one life we have
To not be so painful.