WHAT AMERICAN IS, WHEN WE REMEMBER (Super Bowl XL – Bad Bunny)

America is not a gate.

It is a field—

wide enough for sugarcane to grow

where yard lines once pretended to be borders.

It is a song that refuses translation

because it does not ask permission to exist.

A mother tongue lifted into floodlights,

each syllable a hand reaching forward

instead of a fist held tight.

America is a child

looking up at someone who looks like him,

not because fame matters,

but because possibility does.

Because belief still survives

in the small, unguarded places.

It is a blessing spoken outward,

never hoarded.

A roll call of neighbors,

names said slowly, lovingly,

as if geography itself were a family album

creased by use,

kept close to the heart.

America is flags moving together,

cloth breathing in unison,

not competing for air.

It is color without apology.

It is history that did not arrive quietly

and never will.

America is the courage to stand joyful

while someone else calls joy a threat.

It is love so visible

that hate reveals its true size—

small, brittle, afraid of music.

It is not purity.

It is not silence.

It is not fear dressed up as tradition.

It is not the narrowing of the world

to fit a frightened man’s vocabulary.

America is a place where language becomes rhythm,

where culture is shared like food,

passed hand to hand,

where no one asks you to erase yourself

to be welcomed.

It is the understanding that belonging

is not something you win

by excluding others,

but something you deepen

by making room.

America is a homeland that says,

We are still here,

not as defiance,

but as devotion.

And when the world is watching,

America—at its best—

chooses to answer cruelty

with celebration,

division with invitation,

and hate

with a love so expansive

it cannot be shouted down.

This is the America worth handing to our children—

not wrapped,

not polished,

but alive,

singing in every language it has ever known,

standing together in the open,

unafraid of itself.