I love the sound of sirens. Of course, this demands a suspension of reality— requires that I forget that someone is dying, dead or supremely ill. Back home it used to be the trains that soothed me, reinforced by Mamma’s deep, satisfied sigh, “Did you hear it? Nothin’ puts me to sleep better than the distant echo of a railroad car or the sound of a baby’s shallow breathing.” I agreed with her and then quietly pondered how in the hell she managed to hear anything above Daddy’s raucous midnight snores.

Then, last week, I began to really think about them—the sirens. I hear them more now that my windows are open wide. April, May, June I’ll here and smell everything, the air light with spring, heavy with the sound of new construction, dense with the perfume of downtown’s baking ovens and machines—cake batter, diesel, bread, saw dust, pizza dough all at once. I might shutter them for awhile in the thick of summer but come September, they’ll be open again.

September air.

Five years ago, before I inhabited my little rented corner of downtown Manhattan, what did the man (bc I know he was a man) in my studio apartment smell, hear, taste on that infamous morning?

There was percolating coffee, sure. Morning radio gossip, bad music. And, then what? There wasn’t an errant siren to comfort him (like it would have comforted me while I poured the cream, spooned my sugar) but hundreds. The air didn’t smell like honey-wheat and exhaust, but, instead…? Could you hear the screams, taste the panic in the air? Yeah, I know—September 11th commentaries are ubiquitous, tiresome. But when you break it down to the elemental—the sound, the taste, the smell—it hits you again, somehow it’s fresh.

And, now we have the tapes. We have the desperate coercion of the emergency operators that talk of “staying put,” “wetting towels,” “God bless,” “You can’t breathe? That’s ok because someone’s coming.” Did we need this new assault to our senses? I can honestly say that I don’t know. Free speech, “Freedom of Information Act”—I get that. But, is reliving the horror necessary? Is it cathartic to hear the screams, the “Oh God’s!” the “Bless you’s?”

I’m thinking twice about the sirens in the spring air. I smell the coffee, the yeast, the flowers and take comfort in… nothing.

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