Endings

October 15th, 2001

By Alison Shapiro
The plane has gouged a mouth into the side of the building.
The mouth exhales tidal waves of deep gray smoke
that curl around the building's sharp steel angles
like the way the smoke from the heroine's cigarette
always curls perfectly around her face in old movies.
People fall like meteors alongside the debris.
The first guy I ever really loved somehow ends up holding me.
It is the first time we have touched in over a year.

I am no heroine. I walk uptown chainsmoking while downtown
people are dying from breathing smoke. I hear a mother singing
the end of the song: Life is but a dream. Her daughter cries.
I think about the things I never told people.
I think about the horrible beauty in the collapse of a mountain,
and how graceful some things can be, falling apart.