...all the height beneath me...

One summer I went on a vacation to New York City with my family. I have photos that I took at the top of one of the World Trade towers. On the very top story there was a ledge between where the floor ended and the window began. You could look directly down the side of the building. I had an old camera and took a few shots of the rooftops, the peaks of church spires, and the canyons of city streets between them. It felt strange and beautiful, to look down on something from such an odd perspective. It made the city look like a work of nature, and incomprehensible. My camera jammed after two or three shots, and then, a few months later, came 9/11.
I remembered there was a Sbarros up on that top floor, and all I could think about were the people who died for doing nothing but making meatball subs, and all the tourists on the roof who just wanted a good look at the city, and how the photos that were still in my camera had captured something no one would ever see again.
I go up to the roof of my apartment building now, and I wonder: what’s here now that I can see that no one will ever see again? I can see the dorms at buff state, the green copper towers of the psych center. I can see all the treetops and all the sky; the sun in the day and the moon at night. The sight sticks in my mind, all the strange beauty one can only see with height and I wonder will all of this fall too? and will the view that has jammed in the camera of my mind never be attained by anyone again? I keep revisiting the roof, thinking: How can I preserve this? How can I save these things that I love?