Spencer Finch’s “Trying to Remember The Color of the Sky on That September Morning”

It is the sense memories of September 11 that linger as vividly today as they did 22 years ago.

It is impossible to see a particularly clear, otherworldly blue sky forever dubbed 9/11 Blue without it simultaneously conjuring up the acrid, distinctive smell of destruction and death that lingered for weeks, and the heartbreaking sight of thousands of pleading flyers plastered on subway station walls, becoming poignantly tragic as the days went on.

That smell of 9/11 saturated the suit Hersh wore home that day, covered in ash where blocks from his office he watched the second plane hit the towers as he spoke on the phone to me while on the street. The roaring sound pierced my ears, and then the phone broke up and dropped as the second plane hit and I was left in silence.
The frantic calls to friends, the feelings of hopelessness and fear lingering as long as that acrid smell that permeated everything can still be conjured up by the color blue.