The Snapping

I passed the flagpole on the highway today,

the sound of it snapping chased me for miles,

that government building flag on display,

red and white breaking, violent and wild.

I pulled off at the exit and waited,

tried to remember what that sound meant,

why I'd been pulled off and fated

to sit in this lot, broken and spent.

It was just cloth in the wind,

the ordinary way things break apart.

But something in that snapping had thinned

whatever walls protected my heart.

I sat there unable to feel

what I was supposed to feel,

unable to name what was real,

unable to move, unable to heal.

The wind kept blowing as the flag broke.

And I sat in the car, like some kind of joke,

unable to move, unable to leave,

unable to stop the way I grieve.