We moved into new office space on Maiden lane, across what is now known locally as "the pit" and is known to the rest of the world as "The former location of the twin towers". I can see the pit from our office windows.

Each day I arrive at the "E" train subway station that looks no different than it did in all the years I've been working in New York City. But I don't think I'll ever get used to walking south along the platform, exiting, and seeing daylight, when, since I was 10 years old, that walk always ended in the underground shopping mall that was below the towers.

It's all hustle and bustle now, locals in a rush, tourists snapping pictures of the pit, cars honking and vendors selling hot dogs - just like it used to be. But it's like a phantom pain from a missing limb. Each time I walk past the site, I remember that it's a killing field. I remember the helpless horror I felt as the towers came down, and the rage and fear that consumed me in the months afterward.

The pit itself is largely berift of movement, a few construction vehicles moving around for some pointless task or another. The plans for reconstruction are most likely stalled forever or close to it.

Perhaps the pit is the best monument - just a gaping hole, a scar in the ground from a wound that we'll never really be able to forget.

In my pocket, I clutch my flashlight and feel for my bandanna, the images of poison dust everywhere and entrapped victims stil vivid in my mind. My cell phone is charged, I have a whistle on my key chain, but does that matter? I don't know. It makes me feel better, knowing that I've made some effort to give myself a chance if, as every one puts it down here "something happens again".