I’ve read Falling Man, The Tom Junod story. The man didn’t choose it but still embraced his fate, I think he says. And the Delillo book. Everything now is after. Bill Lawton. Something like that. I was four years old when it happened. So, if I saw it, I didn’t have the capacity to remember what I was looking at. But I force myself to read these stories and these books. And watch the YouTube compilations. And turn on the history channel documentaries. Consume it. Get as close as possible to it. So I can feel it.

And now, here I am. 12:36 a.m. and now it is September 11^th, more than two decades later, and I am laying down to go to sleep and I am nearly out, and I hear an airplane. It is flying low. But we live close to an airport, it’s not a big surprise. And yet, I am imagining, all the sudden, that this plane flies through our second story window and I am on the nose of the plane and we are moving now into the trees behind my house. But the noise of the plane softly fades away above my head now as it ascends towards its far-off destination and I’m still here, safe and sound in bed. Maybe that’s the reason why I read and watch all of this stuff, I realize. It’s not about them, or the falling man, specifically. I just want to have that for imagination’s sake. I just like to make everything about myself.

But then I remember what Mark Wahlberg said about if he’d been on the plane. And I think about the impulse we all feel to tell some story about a personal interaction when some minor celebrity dies. Or I think about that “my own Afghanistan” tweet. Or Ruthkanda forever. And then I realize that it’s just what we do. We make it about us.

And now, I am back on the nose of the plane. We’ve made it through the trees and we’re skirting across the highway, sparks sparking around us as we, the plane and I, head straight for the mall. And I’m wondering if they’ll still make my body go through security when we reach our destination.