Trapped in traffic, tapping my brakes miles away from Somerset, PA,
where Wendy’s and Starbucks served weary travelers, and a Limestone,
domed place on a hill served notice that this was no typical town, but
a county seat, I thought of you in Maryland, alone with your father
visiting from Israel, unable to speak the language. You feared what those
two planes that murdered the towers, and one that wounded the Pentagon,
would mean for us. You came from a land where distance and war forced
many death warrants for lovers. What are we going to do? you had asked,
your words hanging like dead men from a gallows in my mind as I sat there…

… not far from the place
where citizens had faced their
decision to “roll.”