Since September 11, I have been afraid to ride the express train to work. I used to do it every day, but it was on that train that I first heard of the catastrophe at the World Trade Center.

That morning, nothing seemed unusual; people were packed into the cars, staring alone at the floor, talking to friends, or trying to make reading room for themselves as the train jostled us from 14^th Street to Brooklyn Bridge. At Brooklyn Bridge, a young woman boarded, quietly sobbing. She slid into the only empty seat, near the doors. I remember glancing at her sideways, imagining a tiff with a boyfriend, a dismissal from a job, or perhaps, that she might be disturbed. Another woman, petite and dark, who had entered from the far end of the car, approached her. She looked at the girl slumped in the seat

"Were you supposed to be there too?" There was no need for explication of "there" between them. The first woman nodded toward the floor and her voice cracked when she said "yes," and they started to sob together, arms on each others’ shoulders. "I saw it hit. I saw the plane hit the North Tower," and suddenly everyone in the car was looking at them. A man in a dark blue suit said simply, "What happened?," and as the first woman began to tell her story the announcer informed us that we were bypassing Fulton Street and going straight to Wall Street.

I remember hearing gasps of disbelief from those around me, as the young woman told about the planes (by now, both had hit) and the people that were dead, and I recall all of us emerging from the Wall Street station, suddenly the terminus for the number 4 train, with our necks craned toward the Towers.

For a few weeks after the disaster I worked uptown at another office, and only returned to the Wall Street area in mid-October. At first I rode the subway as usual, and then I began to feel strange on the express. It was crowded and the ride between 14^th and Brooklyn Bridge seemed to take forever, every little stop or delay cause for alarm. I scrutinized my fellow passengers, trying to determine what they might be carrying in their bags and briefcases. Did someone have a bomb? Or poison gas?

I would also position myself in the car for strategic escape. Am I close to an exit? Can I escape before being trampled, or before succumbing to the phantom gas? It may seem a bit strange now, but I was not the only one. Right after the attack a co-worker took to carrying an Army-issue gas mask with him in his briefcase, packed there by his wife, right next to his tuna on white. He still carries it.

I tried to get used to riding the trains again, but often I had to get off at Brooklyn Bridge or Fulton Street. I would become dizzy with claustrophobia on the crowded express, so I would walk the rest of the way to my job. Eventually I started to ride the local all the way downtown, taking the express only one short stop to Fulton.

It has been a year, and yet I mostly take the local to work. Like everyone else, I’m still nervous and angry that I have had to capitulate to an unnamed threat. But every once in a while, I hop on the express, as a test, and hold my breath for that long ride from 14^th Street to Brooklyn Bridge. I try to concentrate on the "Poetry In Motion" passages in the car, in order to understand them and memorize them, and I am determined not to give in.