September 11, 2001
The Years After
The day is still killing people
For eight months after the towers came down, men and women worked the site. Firefighters, police, paramedics, iron workers, truck drivers, cleaners, volunteers. They breathed what was in that air, and many of them have died of it since - cancers, lung disease, illnesses that took ten years or twenty to arrive.
More people have now died of September 11th than were killed on September 11th. They are not a footnote to the day. They are the day, arriving late.
A man who walked down eighty flights and out into the street, and who died of a cancer in 2031, was killed by the same attack as the man who never got out. This gate holds them together, because the same morning took them both.
The roll
Ordered by the day each was taken. This roll is not closed.