Twin Towers Given a Voice

Creative Writing Students Imagine How Towers Felt on 9/11

Twin Towers Given a Voice

L. Larson, B. Johnson, M.Carr, L. Tharp, Creative Contributors

Is this how I, one of the most influential and greatest buildings on the planet fall? Flames created by terror and my inhabitants leaping from my sides? Is it fitting that my crumbling will lead to entire wars. Is it fitting that I, who once stood as a symbol to American ingenuity and hopes and dreams and unity, might now fall and usher in a new age of paranoia, terror and distrust?
Is this my legacy? Will I some day rise back up to see the nation of prosperous beauty and acceptance that I have served and proudly overlooked? Will my fall signify the fall of the greatest nation on earth? Will I be reborn as a symbol of triumphant optimism? Or will I be reborn to see a nation poisoned by scars of wrath and fierce vengeance at what has happened to me? How will my beloved sleeping giant who has cradled me for years in its arms react to being awakened to the incineration of one of its most prized jewels? img_9343

Written By: Brett Johnson


My doors opened. Closed. Opened. Closed. People came into my belly, my body. Businessmen, women, workers – my family. Fall had come, winter was on its way. The city, like myself, was just waking up, buzzing with people and cars.
Then.
I felt a sharp pain. Crash. Crackle. Screams. Cracking. Tearing. Death.
My torso had been slit, cutting my organs, filling my lungs with smoke and blood. The city was awake now. Trying to keep strong, I feel my body lighten as th- another blow.
Fire. Smoke. Blood. Screams. Death. I attempt to hold tighter and tighter, but to no avail.

I’m sorry my friends, the fall is coming.

thumbnail_20160912_151637Written By: Liz Larson


Fire – flaming orange blossoms, impossibly hot- refracted a million times over in the endless panes of glass eyes. The light, the blaze – it was sudden, engulfing the gaping hole in our side, vaporizing the falling debris. There was something akin to pain; a belching emptiness, billowing the atoms and ash of former lives out and up into the otherwise clear blue sky. Columns and columns of smoke flowed freely, flying on the cadence of our breath – smoke in, smoke out, smoke in, choking out concrete arteries and steel catwalks. There had been an object, we could remember. Something foreign, something fast. There had been an object – and then there wasn’t. Where there had been metal, metal that pierced our skin and shredded our cells, there was only smoke and dust and hellfire. A chaos that flooded us like a tidal wave. There were feet on the stairs, we could feel. Thousands of feet pounding inside of us in frantic runs and jumps, hopeless efforts to escape. Amidst the shock, we could feel something else: a rush, a disturbance. Then without warming – a second collision. There was a splintering and snapping of steel bones as we felt ourselves giving way. A panic erupted, first inside and then out, as we consigned our first half to oblivion – an apocalyptic descent that left us, left me incomplete. The mountains of rubble and walls of dust were lifeless, things destroyed and destroying without sensation. I was alone, revenged and dying and I know. I know that I would die alone, standing tall in the midst of a mourning city that was helpless to stop it. Already I felt myself bending, buckling, collapsing inward and outward in a froth of vaporized glass and rugged beams and powdered concrete. I feel my lower half go numb and torrents of air rushing against my falling surfaces. A pressure spreads up, a darkness- a final deadness.
And then black.
Black.
Black.

masonWritten By: Mason Carr


Aerials
I am an open book.
I sit above the city and watch from the heavens while my ribcage, mirrored on all sides, mimics the way the sky folds and the city bends beneath me – not only a reflection of this beautiful, World Trading, sky scraping, electric landscape,
but an identical twin to a brother who reflects the other side.
From the outside looking in, I am all steal beams and glass pieces and business attire.
But today, I wear the suit and the city wears the veil of white,
as the airwaves crash into me screaming, “You may now kiss the bride.” As I topple over, stumbling on my own two feet, and marrying the ground beneath me, a fallen angel, disguising himself in the face of God, camouflaging himself in a domino effect that starts with black and ends with grief.
Today I’m keeping the sun out with a curtain drawn from the top, bleeding, burning red and porcelain skin.
Today I am a bleeding heart, saturated in the screaming agony that pushes the deaf composer into hearing.
As if Beethoven and his Sonatas were melodic enough to sooth this hurt,
this burning hopelessness,
the faith of many being lost in the wreckage,
as if the New York City skyline had been starting fires in me forever.   Written By: Laynie Tharpimg_9345