(via Huffington Post; click to enlarge)
This is the first photo I've found that shows where I was standing that day. (On the roof of that little orangey apartment tower to the right of the Empire State building.) We had just moved back to NYC that July and were were temporarily renting an apartment on 26th and 6th. I was six months pregnant. Piero was in Los Angeles for the Latin Grammy Awards and I slept in that morning, only waking up when the telephone rang. It was my sister in Michigan. "Turn on the television. What's happening?" she cried.
I took the elevator up to the roof and joined a group of people who were standing, shell-shocked, at the sight in front of them. Smoke billowed from the towers. I went back down to get my portable radio and when I came back up, the first tower had fallen. We listened to the reports of a plane hitting the Pentagon and another one crashing in Pennsylvania. The second tower fell. Fighter planes flew overhead. Looking down, all the cars coming from downtown were covered in debris. A tattooed construction worker next to me began to cry.
To to those who lost loved ones that day, to those who courageously volunteered with the recovery efforts and to those around the world who wept with us, my heart breaks again, remembering.