30 Day Picture Prompt Challenge

Fourteen Years Later

Fourteen years later,
a photo of fire in a high-rise
still, starkly
strikes a sour chord,
turns my belly into acidic sludge,
causes my heart to jackhammer.

I can still hear the screams,
hear the thud/heartbeat of silence/thump of bodies
who chose to fly and die
rather than burn alive.
Neither choice acceptable, but rather
the lesser of two evils.

Low flying plane overhead
will cause me to cringe
even now, fourteen years later.
Pulling the covers over my eyes
won't stop a crashing plane
or the nightmares.

Stop motion freeze frame seconds
replay ad nauseum.
Smoke billows; impenetrable, choking,
fraught with the unseen hiding within.
Sirens echo off cracked mortared walls,
sense of direction lost in hysteric fog and phantoms.

Life obliterated. Untold stories spew
from turquoise high-heeled shoe lying on a window sill
to perfectly knotted blood-red tie dangling from a branch.
Dust encrusted elder Brit asking if I had time for tea.
Glass-eyes beyond comprehension, yet there was no stopping the seeing.
There was no off button, it had been pushed and broken.

My fingers tremble to type. Time compacts,
condenses, vanishes. Names still listed
in my contacts list never to be deleted
as they summarily were. Images seared into
permanence, still vivid
fourteen years later.

199 words