He calls me his love.

My love! He says, smiling.  And, more quietly, his eyes on mine: my love.

Some of those people, that eleventh day of the ninth month of the first  year of the new century – some of them died right away, vaporized.  But I always think of the  ones  who called.  How urgent the thought: answer, please answer,  please please answer.  

What would I say to you? Thinking of this, I picked up the phone once, the way a pagan might handle a crucifix.   I imagined you on the other end and what I would say to you in the dust and fire and smoke, and the only thing that came to me was: my love.  My love, my love, my love.