09/11/2026
“Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning” installation by Spencer Finch, located inside 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
That’s the color I remember. The clearest, most beautiful blue. A color sky that made you hold your gaze, it was so breathtaking.
I live downtown and often visit the fountains alone. I like to feel. Read names. Stare into thunderous pouring of water that disappears into the earth, to a place you cannot see even if you stand on your tippy toes and stretch forward.
A few days ago I worked up the courage to enter the museum. I could barely breathe from the minute I walked past security.
Surrounded by foreign tourists, some there to check it off their list of landmarks to visit, some to honor the gravity of the event, some didn’t know what they were getting into. The latter fell silent the further into the exhibition they roamed.
Early on, I felt a wave of nausea and had to peel off to hide in a corner and cry into my sweatshirt. It was the posters of missing family members. You could almost miss it, it was so subtle. Just a slowly changing projection of the desperation of those days. When people somehow still hoped their daughters and husbands were Jane and John does who maybe couldn’t be identified in an emergency room. But we all knew.
That part hit me like a ton of bricks.
I tried to pay attention to the artifacts and voice recordings, the room of the thousands of victims headshots. Someone had chosen those pictures. What they thought was the best image to memorialize their loved one who was killed.
I moved faster and faster through the museum. The deeper I went the less I looked at what was so carefully curated for us.
When I finally broke out, I went straight to the fountain. Smelling the dampness of the water evaporating as it spilled its never ending spill.
Never ending. Never forget.
