Main Avenue is dressed again—rows of flags on every lamppost, bright against the June sky. They go up each year before anyone remembers who decides it. By the second morning, the cloth already looks tired from the wind.
A family stopped outside the gallery window today. The mother told her children to wave to the flag, so they did, small hands rising like rehearsed applause. The father filmed them, caught the reflection of his own smile in the glass. Inside, I stood still, pretending to dust a frame.
It isn’t the flags themselves that trouble me; it’s the rhythm. The same phrases, the same gestures, year after year, until they sound like the ticking of a clock no one winds anymore. When I lived in Germany, we were careful with symbols. Too careful, some said. But maybe carefulness is another form of respect.
I locked up early and walked down to the river. A gust sent one of the smaller banners spinning loose from its pole, the fabric twisting before it caught again. For a moment, it looked almost human—struggling, then still. The sound of water covered everything.
A group of tourists crossed the bridge behind me, laughing, their voices carrying over the current. One of them pointed toward the hills and said how the town looked like a picture. I almost agreed. From the right distance, everything does.
Sometimes I wonder if silence is the only place where truth can breathe, but even silence here seems to echo in red, white, and blue.