American Flags

The flag isn’t one thing.

It never was.

It hangs from porches with chipped paint

and from poles too tall to question.

It flaps soft at dusk in quiet towns

and snaps hard above buildings

that forgot the people beneath them.

Some flags whisper.

Some shout.

Some are folded with hands that tremble.

Some are waved by hands that never had to.

It has been stitched by women whose names were never recorded,

saluted by men sent home in boxes,

clutched by mothers who learned grief

before they learned answers.

The same cloth

has covered coffins

and covered lies.

It has been burned—not because it was hated,

but because it was promised something

it did not keep.

It has been raised in victory

and raised in warning.

Lowered in mourning.

Lifted in defiance.

Worn on jackets by people who mean love

and by people who mean threat.

The flag does not choose its hands.

We do.

It does not speak.

We speak through it.

For some, it means home.

For others, survival.

For others still, a door that never opened

no matter how politely they knocked.

You can love a country

and still demand better from it.

You can honor the dead

without obeying the living.

You can stand for the flag

and refuse to kneel to injustice—or

kneel because you stand for something deeper.

A flag is not truth.

It is a mirror.

And what it reflects

depends entirely

on who is brave enough

to look

without flinching.

I Am the Flag

I did not ask to be sacred.

I was cloth before I was symbol—

thread before I was doctrine,

color before I was command.

I remember the first hands.

Calloused. Rushed.

Sewing by lamplight, not prophecy.

No one told me I would be asked

to carry so much.

I have felt rain soak me into silence

and wind tear my edges honest.

I have been folded with reverence

and ripped with rage—

and I understood both.

Do not confuse me with permission.

Do not make me your shield

while you strike another.

I was never meant to cover cruelty

or excuse forgetting.

I have rested on chests

that no longer rise.

I have been pressed to mouths

that could not say goodbye.

I have absorbed tears

saltier than any ocean I’ve flown over.

When you raise me,

know this: I rise with your intention.

When you lower me,

I feel the weight of names you won’t say aloud.

I have watched children pledge to ideas

they had not yet survived.

I have watched elders bow their heads

because remembering hurt less than hoping.

I do not belong to volume.

I belong to conscience.

I do not need defending.

I need reckoning.

If you kneel, I do not feel disrespected.

If you stand, I do not feel honored.

Those are human postures.

I am only fabric, listening.

Ask yourself why you reach for me

when words fail.

Ask yourself what you want me to mean

when no one is watching.

Hold me if you must.

Burn me if you must.

Fold me carefully

or let me fray.

But do not lie

and say I spoke.

I have never spoken.

I have only reflected

who you were

when you lifted your hands

toward me.

Call & Response: With the Flag

ME:

I was taught to stand.

To still my questions.

To call it respect.

FLAG:

Stand if you must.

But don’t still your conscience for me.

ME:

They told me you meant freedom.

FLAG:

I meant possibility.

You decided who qualified.

ME:

I’ve seen you raised in pride

and lowered in grief.

FLAG:

Both are true.

Neither absolves you.

ME:

People argue over you like ownership.

FLAG:

I am not land.

I am not permission.

I am not a weapon.

ME:

Some kneel.

Some shout.

Some turn away.

FLAG:

Posture is noise.

Listening is the work.

ME:

What about the dead?

FLAG:

Say their names.

Care for the living.

Do not confuse ceremony with devotion.

ME:

What about those you never protected?

FLAG:

Do not look at me.

Look at them.

Then stay.

ME:

If I love you, what do you ask of me?

FLAG:

Nothing.

Love is not owed to cloth.

Justice is owed to people.

ME:

If I carry you, what should I remember?

FLAG:

That I rise with your intention

and fall with your courage.

ME:

Then what are you, really?

FLAG:

A mirror.

Held at arm’s length.

Waiting for honesty.

Closing Vow

I vow to honor no symbol

at the expense of a human life,

to let conscience outrank ceremony,

and to stay present where justice asks me to remain.

— Flower InBloom 🌿