On September 11, 2001, Maplewood Township Committeeman Dean Dafis was a young lawyer working for JP Morgan Chase on Wall Street and living in Brooklyn Heights. He was at Ground Zero that day and found himself grasping the pieces of paper that rained down from the towers after they were struck. Holding the sheets and scraps in his hands, Dafis read the contents, seeking to understand what was happening.
In the years since, Dafis, who served as Maplewood Mayor in 2022 and 2023, has shared many personal stories about his journey — as an immigrant, as a gay man, as an advocate for the disenfranchised.
But something Dafis has been reticent to share are his memories of September 11.
That changed this year. And poetry was the vehicle.
At the 25th remembrance memorial event at the Hilton Library on September 11, 2026, Dafis told those assembled, “My memories of that day 25 years later remain as vivid as ever, the horror and terror unmistakably true.”
But, he said, he wanted to share a poem “in loving memory of those we lost – families forever changed – and in honor of the extraordinary courage, bravery, and heroism of our first responders, and of the courage, bravery and solidarity of ordinary citizens across our nation in the days that followed.”
In the years since 9/11, said Dafis, “I’ve shied away from 911 ceremonies, too painful to go back there, but on this 25th anniversary, I wrote a poem that honors the horror without remaining trapped in it, and which hopefully gives us all somewhere meaningful to go: toward one another. It’s called, The Lists We Carried.”
The Lists We Carried
That morning, paper fell from the sky—
not snow,
not rain,
but the unfinished business
of ordinary lives:
a meeting at ten,
milk on the way home,
call your mother,
things to do tomorrow.
It drifted through the thick gray dust,
a terrible confetti—
each page a life interrupted,
each list awaiting its soul.
I looked up
and watched the first tower disappear.
I waited for the smoke to clear,
for the world to correct itself,
for my eyes to confess
they had deceived me.
Was that a person
falling through the air?
Was the tower coming down?
The questions came faster
than answers ever could.
Then the bridge—
thousands of us moving toward Brooklyn,
walking, running, stumbling home,
while fighter jets circled overhead.
Were we at war?
No one knew.
But strangers offered water.
Strangers offered hands.
Strangers became no longer strangers.
For months afterward, at St. Vincent’s,
we wrote names on walls
and searched the faces coming through the doors.
For weeks, volunteers went into the ruins,
searching first for survivors,
then searching so the lost
might be returned to those who loved them.
At night, on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade,
we held candles against the darkness
for the mothers and fathers,
the sons and daughters,
the husbands, wives, friends and neighbors
who would never cross the river home.
And when I finally reached my own door,
covered in the dust of all that had fallen,
I knew then that I was among the lucky ones—
given another morning,
another list to carry,
another chance at life.
We did not come together then
because grief was beautiful.
We came together
because grief was unbearable alone.
For one suspended moment,
there was no stranger among us.
We carried one another—
across bridges,
through hospitals,
into vigils,
and finally home.
Twenty-five years later,
may we remember not only what fell,
but what rose:
courage from terror,
kindness from chaos,
and from countless broken hearts,
one people—one America
still carrying one another, HOME.
Dafis, left, holds hands with Maplewood Asst. Business Administrator Miriam R. Perez, as they watch Mayor Vic De Luca speak. September 11, 2026.
