Standing on the lintel between worlds

Everything was stepped down like a cinema vérité film noir clip. The eyes pieced together an alternate reality where everything took on new importance, or became irrelevant. And our hands fluttered like flocks of pigeons circling the corn, as if we could achieve lift-off by the movement at hand. My hand, acrid with sweat, poised on the brass doorknob, I was headed for an early poetry reading way up north, when the news came. On the TV, I watched the two planes strike the twin towers that fell again, and again, in slo-mo. As I straddled the lintel, the front door became a liminal boundary painted blue. Not wanting to let it in, I closed my eyes, but the images were indelibly burned into the retina. I had no words, they had flown like dove seeking clement shores. My stomach twisted into a gordian knot, severed from reality, as I stood at the threshold, trying to reverse time. But there was no going back. The old world collided with the New World order. Dark storm clouds of smoke, not only on the horizon, but also within. The shock, followed by an inferno of rage as we all adjusted our headsets trying to redefine humanity, after this jihad of the soul.

1/25 Write On! With Susie Terence