I Was a Jump, Skip and a Hop

i ignored their existence, except for one snapshot. i didn’t know you could shop. i was not caught up in the spiral, the velocity, the thunder to the top. where was i? i was a jump, skip and a hop away from eternity. it was burning, all the rage. the celebrants would ne’er more celebrate, engage. the cliffhanger, daring the edge, dizzy with foresight. the ground crew was looking up. their brains fight the visual - the movie reel unseemly, incomprehensible. the towers of ash, the twisted homicides reprehensible. i visit the plot, tour the cascading depths of living hell. the rose scent, the ascent of grim, the mourner’s bell. the snapshot in my grasp. my skeleton shivers in my bed. i’ll never peek, and yet, i did. racks of suits in my head. i ignored their existence, resistant to the absence of beauty. the empire state building, more iconic, wasn’t sooty. it wasn’t until i left, the liftoff of skull to heels, the rudiment of disaster keeled and the knell sounded too distant. i see my sister lifting off, one mere month, before the floor was taken out from underneath their score. the visual i’d not have endured. how did the families manage? the stair master firemen and executive suites at a disadvantage. it’s gone the wrong way. no one should deplane through windows. no more opportunity to advance, for romance, to become heroes. well, yes, perhaps to become heroes - a jarring thought, not long-lived. they’re exclamation points, periods, not caught. thoughtless, pointless, jaws drop one-hundred and ten floors more or less. sifting through papers and effects, shutting doors.