One Year Ago Today
I started a poem not long after the attack as a way to verbalize my emotions. I also decided to make it an alphabetic acrostic as a challenge to myself and because many prayers in Judaism are alphabetic acrostics. I didn't finish it at the time. I revisited it one year later and finished it. I have never written a poem before. I probably never will again. It is what it is. Not a great work of art. But it is mine. Read it if you like.
Another Day Came
Another day came,
But I barely noticed.
Consumed as I was by petty things.
'Do I wear grey or red?'
'Eat now or at work?'
For how could I know that in an instant the whole world would change?
Gone in a moment - friends, work, safety.
Here to replace them - grief, anxiety.
If I could only have gone back one day earlier,
Jealousy, envy, pride I would have erased.
Kept only finer emotions.
Lost the unimportant, the petty, the vain.
Madness consumes the world.
Now the unity, so fleeting in the aftermath, is gone.
Our nation yet again torn apart by internal strife.
People still hate each other for nonsensical reasons.
Questioning why are you not the same as me?
Robbing ourselves of joy.
Seeing only the minor differences.
Taking no note of our similarities.
Using others to bolster our identities.
Vesting ourselves in one group; excluding the others.
What a waste.
eXclusion is our modus operandi.
Yet on and on it goes.
Zealous in our self-enforced isolation.