I can’t believe it’s been eight years. Eight years since the 9/11 attack on America. I remember exactly what I was doing when I heard about the attack – it was passing period in high school. I was walking outside to my next class. I bumped into a friend who cracked a joke about some “stupid pilot that flew his plane into a building.”

We laughed.

My heart sank as I spent the next five hours of the school day glued to the television screen in every single class. I couldn’t believe it.

I watched the second plane fly into building two in band class.

I was devastated. And I didn’t even know anyone in the area. I was miles away in Colorado, but my thoughts and prayers were in New York City.

And I couldn’t believe that just a couple hours prior, I thought it was a joke.

It seemed so surreal. And I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that people would have so much hatred toward the United States to kill thousands of people and themselves. To this day, I can’t believe there is so much hatred in this world.

“If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.” – Sandy Dahl, the wife of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl.

The news coverage was incessant and I was constantly watching. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know all the details regardless of whether they’d result in nightmares. Which, more times than not, they did.

I dug up a poem I wrote shortly after the attack.

A Cloud of Smoke

It’s like looking through a bubble

to the crimson stained sky.

The wavy mirror

in the house of mirrors

distorting the proportion.

Baffled by the size

of the rubble left behind.

In your mind, nothing is real.

Blink, and pinch all you want

you will not awake from this nightmare.

This octopus

strangles thousands

of throats with hatred.

This fire flight

has locked the door

and taken off

and raised its wheels.

Consider it; hopeless.

Take a moment today and remember.