REALITY: 9/11/01

He laughs and runs just like the other boys even though he doesn’t have a father just his mom. Wild-eyed big-grinned wild-legged games of tag with hands held open at the ready. On a schoolyard in Missouri grassy brown and littered with the colors of September he’s happy, unaware of any threat except for maybe Brandon who’s a bully and likes to pick on little kids. He slows and for a moment stops and listens. Eyes dart at the subtle hum that only he can hear off in the distance. Shoulders pull together at an imagined rush of wind. Brown-black curly head dipped down, he cringes as a plane glides overhead. Sometimes his friends will tease him but most times they somehow know and don’t, remembering what Miss McCallum told them about that picture in their history book, about that day.  He’s just a little boy and he was only two some years before in New York City.