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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 4614 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention The Haunting Janet Kenny New Year’s Eve 2002 Have I told you? Emmy said, “my September the eleventh?” Still beautiful, she sat under moonlit vines on a warm verandah in the dark. Each emotion clearly marked: “That night the TV program stopped. Suddenly it switched to New York.” “And there, there -- that second plane. All I knew was an acrid smell, overwhelming, it burned my nostrils, my eyes were hurting, my head pounded. My heart thumped hard, it hurt my chest. Again in Germany, I was thirteen, and ran despairing towards my school. I was forbidden to go, but went. Bombs fell around me but on I ran. Someone said our school had been hit. I thought of the caretaker and his family. I rushed blankly through burning streets. The building was rubble with flames and smoke. I was not allowed near. The police were there. I never found whether my friends were dead. I have always ignored those memories. All my life since, I would only allow the comical times; anecdotes, the lexicon learned with my brothers and sisters - until that night, when the TV switched me, dragged me suddenly to New York. Now, like serpents, memories writhe, creeping into every thought. Other bombs, different unthinkable hells. I wanted to die here, happy in Sydney, cleansed of all those...all those...things. No dark inheritance for my grandchildren. Now every day, the pain repeats. I was free till that plane on TV suddenly shoved me back into pitch. |
