Not to stand and saluteā
but to kneel and remember.
They will tell you that patriotism is stillness.
A hand to your heart.
A silence in your throat.
A script you were never allowed to edit.
But I say:
The most patriotic thing you can do right now
is weep for this country.
Weep for what it couldāve been.
Weep for what it demands you forget.
And thenā
with trembling hands and salt-wet cheeksā
write it all down.
So the forgetting never wins.
š©ø To Love a Country That Has Hurt You
To love America right now is to ache.
It is not easy. It is not blind. It is not safe.
It is standing in the ruins
of a promise you inherited
but never fully receivedā
and still whispering,
āI believe we can do better.ā
Because what they call āpatriotismā
has become a mask for cowardice.
They love America like a trophy wife:
as long as sheās obedient, quiet, and beautiful from a distance.
But the moment she starts rememberingā
the moment she bleeds, or speaks out of turn,
they call her ungrateful.
They call her broken.
But I call her alive.
And I love her anyway.
šļø This Is What Patriotism Looks Like
Patriotism is not fireworks.
Itās not ballgames.
Itās not a child with a flag and a camera in her face
before sheās old enough to know
what the stars and stripes have cost.
Patriotism is not a performance.
It is a pulse.
A broken rhythm beneath the ribcage
of every citizen who wakes up wondering
how we keep surviving this.
Patriotism is telling your children the truth
even when your voice shakes.
Patriotism is holding your country
like you would hold a grieving
motherā
not with pride, but with reverence.
šÆļø What We Must Remember
Remember the ones who didnāt come home.
Remember the ones we turned away.
Remember that barbed wire once fenced children.
That churches have burned.
That ballots have bled.
That justice still limps like a veteran
dragging one good leg through a rigged parade.
Remember.
Because if we donāt,
we are not a country.
We are just a marketing campaign
with better fireworks.
ā A New Kind of Allegiance
I pledge allegiance
not to the flagā
but to the hands that sew it.
To the lungs that protest it.
To the voices they tried to erase from the anthem.
I pledge allegiance
to every Black mother
still waiting for her child to be treated like a child.
To every migrant who learned our laws better than we didā
and still wasnāt welcome.
To every queer kid
whoās ever had to justify their existence
to the same government that prints ālibertyā on its currency.
I pledge allegiance
to the uncomfortable conversations.
To the hard questions.
To the broken-hearted believers
who stay anyway.
šŗšø And If You Still Love Americaā¦
If you still love America,
donāt show me a flag.
Show me the books youāre reading.
The truths youāre unlearning.
The silence you broke.
The shelter you offered.
The history you teach your children
when no one is grading.
Show me your grief.
Your fury.
Your hope like wildfire.
Because I still believe in us.
In the bones of this broken house.
In the ghosts who havenāt given up.
In the hands that plant seeds
where others salt the earth.
That, to me,
is the most patriotic thing a person can do.
With Liberty & Justice for All,
āRebecca M. Bell
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