After

These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after.

~Don DeLillo

After, the music stopped. It would be days before it started playing again.

I woke up that morning to a disembodied voice coming through the speakers of my radio, describing a plane crash that had happened at the World Trade Center. I got out of bed and turned on the T.V. just in time to see the second plane smash into the second tower.

After, I drove in slow-moving traffic to my morning classes at the university. Every single radio station carried an endless loop of news updates. There was no music that day.

What I remember the most is how eerily silent everything was that morning. The whole university campus was stunned into stillness. In class, everyone took their seats in a muted daze. The girl behind me was the only one who spoke. I saw people falling, she whispered. They were jumping from the windows. She wasn’t speaking to me. She wasn’t speaking to anyone, really. I saw them falling.

After, we were silent. Maybe we were being stoic. Maybe we were just afraid. We waited for our professor to tell us what to do. We looked to him for an answer as he walked through the doorway and stood at the front of the class. We waited.

I don’t know what to tell you, he said. I’m not going to make you sit there and pretend to learn while I stand here and pretend to teach with all of this going on.

No false bravado. No attempt to console. Only the truth. 

I don’t know what to tell you.

I always appreciated that.

After, we all left class together and walked slowly out into the heavy air.

I don’t know.

We didn't speak. Maybe we were being stoic. Maybe we were just afraid.

Let’s not pretend.

We were very afraid.