At the end of the day, you sit down quietly and think to yourself: who am I?

If you’re lucky, you have an answer.

Tonight I sit and it’s far from quiet - especially with 72nd street outside of my window. A plane crashing into a building just down the street this afternoon, doesn’t leave one much room for quiet thoughts.

When I found out at work someone said “how does this happen again?” I have no idea. But I do know that death and disaster are in our midst all of the time, and we never even notice. A lot of miles on the highway without failing brakes, a lot late nights walking home from a bar alone without an altercation, a lot of planes than land safely on their respective runways.

After weaving past the cops and police cars and news crews and onlookers that were congregated just outside of my apartment when I came home, I thought about chance and how I don’t really know what it means. How some people get into planes that crash into buildings and some don’t. How planes crash into some buildings and not others.

Sitting here now with the loud and soon-to-be-forgotten sounds of the day’s events coming through my window along with the pulsating sound of the down-pouring rain, I ask myself a question and can’t hear the answer - because the rain is so loud it’s almost like it’s raining right here in this room, hitting then bouncing up off of the floor as the water spreads, rises, and eventually, engulfs.