I’ve tried for years to forget them, tried not to imagine how it was to step away from those fingers of fire into the cool air of a September morning. I used to dream I was one of them, on a window ledge waving a white flag I’d made from a dead man’s shirt. Now I think more often about dying the way my mother did, without complaint, quietly as the man who fell headfirst from the North Tower, graceful as a diver. The ones who flailed and fought their way down: Don’t tell me they weren’t trying to fly.
