The Country I Carry

I carry a country that fits in no suitcase, that cannot be folded into neat squares or pressed flat between the pages of a history book. It is too large for its own anthem, too contradictory for a single flag. I carry the amber of wheat fields at dusk and the smoke of cities that never sleep. I carry porch lights left on for strangers and doors slammed shut in every language. I carry the dream— the one they keep promising, the one they keep almost delivering, the one that still makes people cross oceans and deserts with nothing but their children and their stubbornness. I carry the jazz that came from suffering, the blues that turned pain into art, the rock and roll that told a generation to get up off the floor and dance. I carry the protest sign and the picket fence. The soup kitchen and the stock exchange. The grandmother who speaks no English and the grandson who speaks nothing else and the love between them that needs no translation. This country is an argument with itself— always has been— a family that fights at dinner but shows up at the hospital. It breaks your heart. It breaks its own promises. And then, in some small town or city corner, someone does something so decent, so unscripted, so American in the best sense of a word that has no single sense, that you remember why you stay. Not because it's perfect. Because it's trying. And I carry that, too— the trying— heavier than anything, and somehow the lightest thing I own.