Skillful Water Carrier

Kelly Tsai, "One September" , reflections on the 10th anniversary of September 11.

Looking back on these last 10 years since September 11th is synonymous to looking back on these last 10 years of myself. A loss of innocence. A coming of age. Everything is not as you think that it is. It takes courage just to live. It takes a kind of insanity to have a singular focus to not believe in war and commit every single fiber within you to stopping it. It essentially takes you denying a kind of life to yourself.

Every day a bombing occurs. Nearly every day a child dies. In history, we will be remembered as a terrible empire, a hypocritical one, and I will be a part of it. A poet with a heart full of desire and a head full of shame. One who wanted the earthly delights of clothes and shoes and good food, while others died, yes, in my name, but also to satisfy a kind of thirst that has tried to destroy me also. But I survive and if I can make anything of this life, I will think of that man on that train one day in September, come down like an angel from a heaven that none of us may deserve, trying to quiet the fear in a young woman’s heart.