I rise to roommates transfixed Screens bleeding smoke, Manhattan's wounds Burning our morning eyes. My phone: her voice a fracture. Her father: somewhere in the cloud of dust, That collapsing sky of glass and steel. We, unwilling witnesses, Attempt to look away But find ourselves anchored As twins surrender to gravity. And yet, in time, they rise Cast shadows, beaming the speed of light. Small shadows stretch to decades, Our children's fingers trace the names, Not knowing the weight they inherit— How absence builds its own monument. To be human is to seek forgetting, To scar over memory with routine. But some voids refuse to be filled, Some stories demand to be carried, Rebuilt with each telling. Nine. One. One. Three digits that collapsed time, Three digits that hold us together Three digits that illuminate the future we can build.