Red Flags

Red flags feel like home. I grab your red flags and wrap them around my shoulders as if they will be the only thing in the relationship to bring me comfort. As if they aren’t all bad. I make shitty excuses for them because they feel familiar, they feel like safety in disguise. Your red flags pile up and I could set fire to them to keep warm but where’s the fun in that? Let them pile up, I’ll find ways around them with words like “he didn’t know any better.” “this is the first time he’s done that.” Excuses because I have seen these red flags before, in all the eyes of my ex lovers. I’m collecting them now like a long lost collection of jagged rocks. The red flags feel like home because I have collected all the similar ones over the years and put them in a pile in the back of my mind to collect dust. Red flags wave just as good as green ones so why not settle? Settle into the words that sound alright in my mind like “he will never do that again” “he said he’d quit”. Words are just words but they add up like a stack of Jenga. I collect them just as much as I collect the red flags and it’s all adding up now. Red flags feel like home because you have disguised them, wrapped them up with pretty bows. You have disguised the red flags as yellow flags and I fall for it every time. It’s not so bad. This won’t last forever. You’ll change, but the red flags won’t. They stay red, blood red and I use them to wipe my tears because they are supposed to provide comfort but there’s none of that left here. There’s no more excuses for the red flags I have piled up high towards the ceiling. There are no more moments for change. I think I see them all so clearly now. The green flags can’t make up for the red ones my heart is buried in. It’s too late. I use your red flags as a rope to climb out of this hell I’m in, to escape the inevitable. Red flags are red flags and you wave them too often. -M.D.L