9/11 is tired of the hole at Ground Zero. She doesn't get it. Every year, she goes to the site of the Twin Towers, only to gaze at the crazy quilt boondoggle of cement and steel and mesh and wire, the strangeness of absence, the seeming refusal of the space to sprout, progress, grow. She was promised a mighty, twisting building that would stand there as Manhattan's proud erection, poking out of the bottom of the island, thrusting through the skies, a tribute to the Viagra-induced capitalists and politicians who would show just how unfuckably big and hard they could be.
And every year that passes, to 9/11, the hole, however much it's glacially filled, simply looks like the national sphincter.
9/11 is glad this year that she can move among the gathered people without anyone really noticing her. She walks in the rain, past people who are too lost in their private mourning and leaders who do not fetishize her like a pair of high heel shoes or latex panties. She is grateful for the respite, however long it will last, however much Sarah Palin or Dick Cheney try to set up appointments with her to use worn-out dildos on her exhausted snatch. That game is played out. She sees a return to normalcy, in a way, even with the wars in her name still going on, but with people questioning them in more and more open ways. She sees the new president call for "service" on her day, not just rage and teeth-gnashing and pledges of vengeance. Yes, she thinks, yes, she just wants to fade. But the hole there, in front of her, won't let her.
In the end, maybe there just needs to be a hole, she thinks. Surely it would cost less to maintain. Maybe it just needs to be like the cigarette burn scars left on her legs by Karl Rove, healed over, but still there, still itching every now and then, still allowing her to never really forget who she once was, but showing her that time passes and contexts change, that you really can move on.
