We Still Live in the After

I wasn’t planning to write about September 11th.

But every year, the day arrives, not just in history, but in atmosphere. It returns in memory. In silence. In the ache we edit.

September 11th belongs first to those who lost their lives, and to the families who carry their absence every day. That grief is immeasurable. That wound unforgettable.

This isn’t about headlines or politics.
It’s about what lingers.
What we still carry, even if we never said it aloud.

Some days live outside the calendar. You don’t need a reminder to remember. September 11th is one of them.

It was the kind of morning that taught us time can fold. We all remember where we were. What we were doing. The stillness in the room when the world pulled its breath in and held it.

Some felt the kind of grief that doesn’t leave the body. Some stared at the sky and waited for it to break again. And some of us looked at our names, our faces, and knew we had just been rewritten.

For all of us, there was a before. And then, there was after.

After 9/11, no one moved through airports the same.

After 9/11, skylines carried ghosts.

After 9/11, a generation grew up learning that ordinary mornings can split the world in two.

Some prayers became suspicious. Some passports became evidence. Some families told their children how to stay small in public. Safety got a new definition, and some of us were written out of it.

The ache is layered: the lives stolen, the grief carried, the wars waged in someone else's name. The innocence lost. The stories untold.

Some wounds make themselves monuments. Others stay hidden in small rituals: flinching at plane engines, checking the date, looking away when the headlines say breaking.

And then there are the wounds without language. The ones we don’t name because we were told it wasn’t our grief to carry.

But I remember.

I remember the silence. I remember who was allowed to speak, and who was not.

I remember when empathy became exception. I remember when suspicion became policy.

We still live in the after. Because tragedy doesn’t only mark those at its centre. It reshapes the ground beneath us all.

Grief is not the only thing we’ve carried.
Some of us carried the after into everything.