Confession

As much as I was excited for the 2010 Winter Olympics, I avoided watching it a lot. Something about the whole event just depresses me. It's as if everything about the games serves as a sad reminder of how I'm not up north.

On the land the media covered for weeks, that country hosting some of the world's greatest athletes, I left my heart along with my strength and security and inspiration and dreams.

Each time they played the Canadian anthem I remembered shifting uncomfortably whenever we were asked to stand and sing in Alberta.

"crap! I don't know the words!"

I remember looking helplessly up at him with hand over heart trying to mumble words I did not know, feeling terribly out of place. He would look back and smile at me, continuing to sing every word with pride.



Did you know, darling?
Did you know about the light you give off when you're proud?
And how fast the spark jumps when you stand not just for etiquette but for something you're sure of, something you believe in and defend and trust?
Here right next to you, how could I not want to share in the moment? And yet, it's yours and I would never want to impede. I'm more than content to just be beside you and try to follow along.

"Love does not consist of gazing at each other," Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, has explained, "but in looking outward together in the same direction."

Did you have to look away?
How long did I try in
vain to sing along with
your secret silent song?

Did you know, darling?
Did you know about the (lack of) words I heard from you?
I --hopeyoudidntcrossyourheartforthat too--
am left reading measures you never bothered to pen

and I would still sing if I could do it
loud enough so that you would finally
--justmaybeevenpossibly-- hear me
but how long could I hold that note til my

lungs finally burst?