The American flag represents a collage of life’s moments, arranged like crisp stars against a backdrop of old glory blue.

A boy in a camouflage cape bolts toward his sobbing father, the real hero. The wooden post of a miniature flag is pressed between his palm and pudgy fingers.

Tinged, brassy keys of the family car are clutched in the fist of a young woman as she hugs her brother goodbye on her way to college. An American flag flies high and proud on the truck’s antenna.

A man on a John Deere tractor scoops up bushels of tawny wheat as his grandchildren romp in the crimson barn. His wife arranges a cake, adorned with hand-picked blueberries and licorice whips configuring the stars and stripes of the flag.

Two ivory gowns glimmer in the church’s refracted rainbow hued light as a couple says “I do.” An American flag ripples high above the white steeple as bells harmonize in August winds.

A mother carefully adjusts the cotton cruelen hijab of her youngest daughter before her first dance. The Star Spangled Banner echos from the TV set in their home, reflecting the flag flying high above Yankee Stadium onto the bay windows.

Tears race down the ebony cheeks of a man who lost his father to a hate crime. An American flag presses into the mossy grass next to the cool granite engraved with his surname.

An altar is created with candy skulls and technicolored memories of an abuela as a Hispanic family prepares for Día de los Muertos. Next to the red, white, and green of the Mexican flag sits another in red, white, and blue.

The white picket fence emcompases the jade carpet where I take my first steps, where my brother catches fireflies in glass jars, and where my Autistic niece learns to read. An American flag billows above every house on the block, backlit by firecrackers and set against a backdrop of an old glory blue night.