A SEQUENCE OF FLAGS

I wonder how much time I'm wasting, sitting here like this, hands discreetly folded in my generous lap. I can't really remember when I first came in, let alone took this chair for a roost. My mind stopped cold nearly twenty-four hours ago but the body kept going a little while longer, at least long enough to put me in this room.

"The boy's gone." The words are off in the distance but I don't have to hear them again anyway. Once was enough. There'll be a flag, someone says. Only right, says another. I can still see his first flag.

The stars were too big and too few, the stripes uneven sticks stuck inside a lop-sided square. But he meant well and told me his teacher was really proud of how he'd done, better than most of the others. Then, when he wasn't five anymore, he was standing stiff and straight in the court of honor and there was that flag again, hanging loosely behind him as he became, finally, a Tenderfoot Scout. He had looked at me that night, or maybe just in my direction, and smiled that toothy, wide-eyed grin. He never was very good at being solemn. Then I blinked my eyes, once, twice at the most, and sat witness to another ceremony and another flag.

Graduation. I'm not sure I understand even now how it happened so fast. When he was born, I thought, oh, my, this will last forever. I'll never have another complete night's rest or finish a hot meal and my washer is going to go on strike. Two washers, too many meals and long-nights-alone later, I had before me a young man whose features were vaguely familiar but I couldn't seem to place him. When he rushed around the podium after getting his diploma and in his haste nearly knocked the flag to the ground, then I saw the child again, lost in sudden embarrassment, and I held him once more in my arms. I'd forgotten how warm he was.

But now I look straight ahead. I'm afraid to look left or right, leery of catching someone's eye, for all eyes seem to be upon me. I want no conversation, no light chatter or earnest heart-to-hearts. I want nothing because I feel nothing. Someone I'll never know from a country I'll never see stole my breath away and in return I'll get a folded flag. The last uniform he wore proved to be no armor against the weakness of mankind, the driving urge to obliterate each other at every opportunity. There are no more ceremonies and no more flags. The boy is gone.

(c) 1991 Kristin Shorter
(a poet, shared with prior permission)