09/11/2026
NEVER FORGET the moment the phone rang,
You answered with so much to lose,
Never forget the confusion, the “huh?”
The yelling to “Turn on the news.”
Never forget the staring right at it,
That image that made zero sense,
Never forget the shocked disbelief,
How your body was suddenly tense.
Never forget searching the sky,
For floors that used to be standing,
Never forget the fleeing, the running,
The leaping, the falling, the landing.
Never forget the waiting, the waiting,
The deeply insufferable waiting.
Who was inside? And who has returned?
The horrible heart-f**king waiting.
Never forget that your flip phone was useless,
And you walked over bridges on foot,
Never forget the smoke in the air,
The plume, and the ash, and the soot.
Never forget on Sept 11th,
That you and I were both one,
Never forget that on that fall morning,
Under the warmth of that sun,
Divided we weren’t,
We weren’t at odds,
We weren’t right red and left blue.
It was just me,
An American,
And you.
Police weren’t evil,
News wasn’t fake,
The press wasn’t enemy one,
When horror descended,
And our chests were ripped open,
You and I weren’t undone.
We were a country,
We were a people,
We were a hit nation hurt,
But we banded together,
To sweep the debris,
And to search our way through the dirt.
Never forget to honor the fallen,
Taken without a goodbye,
Never forget the who, what, and where,
Even without a real why.
Never forget our friends and our neighbors,
Who left us too soon and too fast,
And never forget that on that fall morning,
That’s now over twenty years past,
That we searched, and we looked,
And we warmed, and we cooked,
We carried, we lifted, we paced,
And when it was over,
We gathered together,
And opened our arms and embraced.
Never forget on Sept 11th,
That you and I were both one,
Never forget that on that fall morning,
Under the warmth of that sun,
United we stood,
Together we joined,
We were so much more than red-blue.
You held me up,
My fellow American,
And I held you.
— Julio Vincent Gambuto
