Banner Yet Waves

Banner Yet Waves
Erin O'Brien

When you are the American flag, you are beautiful. Every American carries you. You have your own birthday, although it passes quietly, unlike the birthday of the country you represent, with its grilled meat and dazzling fireworks.

People leave their rough woven blankets and clay casks to sigh before your bounty. People abandon their kin to huddle beneath your shelter. People risk their lives to walk freely upon your gilded paths.

You are proud.

You hang straight down in the middle of the country. There are those who are behind you and those who face you with jaws set. In each of them you evoke something unique, from blind faith to yawning indifference. You protect all of them just the same, even the ones who are screaming as they burn you.

On September 12, 2001, nearly 3,000 holes in the cloth of you garnered something very rare: sympathy. Pure and golden, it shone from flags from all over the world.

You were born from American flesh. You were wrapped around this new flesh in order to swathe it, to shield it. But your seams have grown tight, so tight they nearly burst as they attempt to cover the burgeoning fat of the flesh. The fat is rich, fed from corn and milk and oil. The fat is ravenous. It grows larger and larger while your size remains the same.

Those who love you have left you in unwise hands. Some regret it, some do not.

Those hands did not assign proper value to the world's sympathy. They squandered it. And now flags across the globe shun you. They hate and distrust you.

Men who pray at the altar of greed feed the fat. Their lies fade the honor of your stars and stain the color of your stripes.

For each soldier who leaves hearth and home to fight for those lies, one of your stitches weakens. Nonetheless, in the day, you deny your troubles and wave spectacular in the sunlight. In the night, however, you worry over the threads of your fiber, if they are loosening, if they are becoming thinner and weaker.

When you are the American flag, you are heaviest for your soldiers.

They carry you on high and remain strong. This strength, in its inception, progression and demise, evokes tears. You are immersed in the tears. You are saturated with the tears. Despite these tears, the tears of virgins and mothers, your stains persist.

You hung unceremoniously over desert sands while a man deemed evil hanged from a rope that divided his country. Now you are draped around the vulnerable shoulders of his people. You are obliged to remain and shield those people against chaos. At the same time, you are inappropriate garb. Your fabric scratches and irritates the Iraqi skin. The longer you remain, the worse it gets.

While you were serving as that unwelcome cloak, God delivered a terrorist unto the earth.

Her thunder boomed for days before her deluge arrived. But instead of heeding the warning and unfurling you, instead of holding you up as a barrier between the Crescent City and the murderess Katrina, a man named Bush crumpled you into a knot of weariness and lies and shoved you into his back pocket.

You have 50 stars and 13 stripes. Your ratios are exacting as are the manner in which you are to be displayed and folded. The number of coffins you respectfully cover is also counted with precision. However, those who count for you are not so skilled at counting for others. Hence, since spring of 2003 when your reign of undeniable witness ensued, the number of Iraqis that have died is unknown. Estimates range from 5,000 to 500,000, as if zeros meant nothing.

You are sorry.

On that foreign soil, new babies are bathed in the blood of their mothers before you while your minions at home knit their brows and agonize over mocha frappuccino or vanilla latte.

Still, you have hope.

You are red with anger. You are white with fear. You are blue with sadness.

You are the American flag. Every American carries you.

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This essay was originally published in the print and online editions of the Cleveland Free Times.