Fun With Words

When Time Calls Your Name

I remember your sweet smiling face in the “before time.”
Sitting on your balcony
Watching the sun rise and fall over the Hudson River.
Then the Towers fell like Humpty Dumpty
And your world was covered in dust.
The world you lived in turned into a crematorium.
.
Your home vanished with the World Trade Center.
Your balcony only a hazy memory to be lost in time.
They found you a new home still close to
What became known as Ground Zero;
Your ground zero of loss.
.
As time marched on your smiling face smiled no more.
Agony washed over your body until the cancer
Took you to a place of no pain.
Not having died in the towers’ collapse
You have no name on the memorial of flowing waters.
But I have a box in which is stored relics of our friendship,
The memories of the years before the fall.
.
You became the poster child for every friend
I lost in the years since that dark day of terror.
I open that box on every 9/11
For that is when time calls your name.
And I am the one who listens, remembers,
And promises that you will never be forgotten.
Not until time calls my name and takes me away.
.
In memory of those who died from 9/11 related illnesses
.