9-11 stories: an iron worker's lungs destroyed

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"I went down there on 9-11; I was an iron worker. I'm retired now," the 67 year-old man told me as we boarded our bus in New Haven. "My lungs were full of those toxins, and what I saw...God, I was in therapy for years. It was so bad, I remember once thinking someone was there to shoot me and no one was even there."
Nine-eleven has many stories, many perspectives, many survivors. This particular perspective, though, was new to me. Because this man said they're still finding spores on his lungs. Because I now envision all the body parts and blood and bones and detritus of human lives in all that rubble.
It is easy to sanitize that day, to turn a single photo of the "falling man" into art (Elton John bought the famous photo), but it is harder to comprehend how much that day hurt the first responders.
Jon Stewart has done a phenomenal job exposing the City of New York for covering up the health risks to those workers and residents of lower Manhattan. I visited Greenwich Village the Friday night after the attacks and remember an eery grey encompassing Cornelia Street. But I was with poets, not the dead.
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_Department_Images_WTC_9-11_Iron_Workers.jpg

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