In 1980 they played in Lake Placid,
all peace on the surface but me frozen inside
just praying for some miracle this time.
After church we raced home, 
the five of us screaming at the TV,
me doing my best to tell myself I could
just fall in love with the goalie this time
or some stranger somewhere
and forget the man on the boat
and me always jumping
off one cliff or another.

Then two years later, at the World's Fair in '82,
you standing there and me as ever
lost and alone, all out of love
after wandering on my own
through the China exhibit
dreaming of being in Beijing
one day with you, knowing
somehow that woudl be killed, too,
though then I never knew
I would come so close
to seeing it with you.

Then 1984, Sarajevo, and memory's music,
me depressed as hell that first winter of college,
shaking like a leaf every time I saw a rose,
why I did not yet understand or know,
and then the blooming memory
and the sound of silent skating
across the a field of ice on war-torn fields...
just like my heart and how your memory
was always etched in me.

That summer at the conference center
where I went to escape your memory
you were everywhere and then you
really were there, waltzing through time
as if you did not know who I was.
Maybe you didn't. I don't know.
You got ice cream with her and talked
to the boy I watched the sunrise with
while I had thought of you and France
and how the time was always wrong.
And then there you were, arriving late
and sitting next to me, the both of us
knowing all the parts left out of the text
we studied that day. At work there
I cleaned the toilet in your room and took
myself out with the $20 tip and asked God
for you please to remember me.

Later that summer I won prizes
from the fast food place, beating the system
(already I had a knack for that) and
racking up free food, pretending not to cry
when he and I sat together laughing listening 
to Whitney belt it out, saying what my heart 
always sang to you. Give me just one moment,
just one moment in time. 1984 felt drear 
and distopian and I a misfit, ever running
fast and always out of time.

And then came the moment it all clicked
and me no longer able to pretend it was
nothing but a dream, the summer I waltzed in
with him to the conference center, happy and singing,
"Take on you. Take me on..." and seeing you there,
pulled like a magnet and spun three times around,
never really coming down and running like mad
away from you and you and you everywhere,
saying yes to his question just to try to forget
all the answers I knew about you
whom I had yet to meet officially.

I ran so far away, but I couldn't get away.
But it wasn't Rio's turn. I married him 
and drove straight into the hornet's nest
and you, nearly dying of a heart attack 
when I heard your voice talking back 
on the other end of the line there
where I ran, three states away from you,
but there was no doubt it was you again.
Then came 1988, Calgary and Seoul, and 
my self-imposed death by dis-integration
and a descent into hell. You hired me
and I played along with what I thought was pretense
but I didn't have the staying power. 

By 1992, again I had moved away from you,
expectant and expecting but France and Spain,
Albertville and Barcelona hot hot hot
and your quick wit, they all did me in
and I came undone again... until you were
the first to hold the boy I would have named
for you. The One you still remembered from then
softened my heart to you. I remember how
three years earlier he and I lhad laughed
in silence in my heart when I sat next to you
listening to, "I Don't Know How to Love Him,"
chattering away in my brain with him, telling him
then in no uncertain terms hat I didn't have a clue 
how to keep the faith and stay true
to a plan much bigger than you knew.
I was always falling apart and in the dark.
But by 1992 I had called it dead and 
tried my best to forget all things resurrection.

1994 was Norway and no way for me
to get back to where I was always meant to be.
You would go without me and I would pretend
again not to care that I wasn't there. I drifted but
dared at last to fight for my life and the boy's.
Then, back in Atlanta, having said yes
for a second time to the compromise,
knowing it was a promise he had made
and trusting somehow God would make a way,
I invited you to watch the opening ceremonies
but all hell broke loose and a bomb went off
and false accusations flew. I was brave.
I, lover of lost causes and opera, told myself
my heart would go on and on. I would stay, alive.

The hell of the days through the next two years
after all the slashing fury I have yet to understand
meant I missed Japan, sick to my stomach
at having missed Europe and India and China, too,
and all the things I knew were to come
and all the years and me alone, alone,
trying to cope with my body still feeling it all...
The lights went out and some flame
was extinguished and I sat Sydney out
and then the towers fell and I descended
again into hell, emerging as a phoenix
but not for another four years and 
the return to Athens, remembering
your love long ago for Greece.

By 2006 and Torino, Italy, though I knew there
was no back to Italy, I dared to dream again.
Determined to rise and mend whatever
I could of the shambles of my life, 
I did my best to ask for help as they led.
But I stumbled on the first go
and reading your reply a month in coming
I sounded the death knell and said to hell
with it. I would give you what I thought you wanted,
me in chains and chained to some eternal
damnation, all subjugation and submersion.
I did something good for everyone but me
and I married him a second time out of time
to try to erase you from my heart and mind.

2010 was Vancouver and by that time 
I could not not remember what or when. I painted
"Time for Transformation," having decided for love,
to keep our beginning and my end of our soul's bargain.
And I began my training. By the time the queen appeared
repelling down from a helicopter (London was
falling in 2012 but I still believed in building bridges)...
it seemed if she could break with tradition, surely
we could get it together and make our way back
to civility and you forgive whatever it was you thought
I had done in whatever time to return to do
what it was we came to do. Again, I was alone.
At the monastery, the three came in spirit to me
and told me to go, to give them five in happy
celebration and five in years of earthly time.

Sochi came and I went on, tracing the curve of long
Heartland highways in 2014 and then, another miracle,
watching Rio from the heart of the Emerald Isle,
giving all my love for you to the Earth and slowly
loving myself back to life for three years more.
I was happy, and he gave me France and Spain
and told me you often were coming still. He walked
with me up that hill to the final completion and surrender
in December of 2016 and the one heart
beating double time for you. And the five years,
like five rings, came again to completion,
and I returned to await further instruction.

So much goes into it, they tell me, this life,
the making of a champion. Wherever you are,
eating your Wheaties or playing the knight tonight,
watching the ceremony with your latest miss or Mrs. Right
or drinking alone again, sorry and convincing yourself
that, naturally, you will do the right thing and
no doubt call it integrity... whatever, wherever,
the fact remains you are not here and you are
still a man at war having for ages forgotten what he's
fighting for and, though struck blind, ever failing to see
the true treasure of me and you and us all
living in peace and harmony.

You like to compete, to go for the gold
and, just like me, you can see it now:
that all that glitters will not last or stand the test of time
and that the glowing rings of a future world
take us ever back to the past and your ship's mast 
and then sailing into hope and infinity.
Whatever will be, I will let it, let it, 
let it be, still carrying with love this flame
for life and you and all you do and do not
remember of me, our twin towers' terror,
our twin hearts' treasure up in flames.

This is my closing ceremony—only celebration. 
My life's testimony and all the epic stories
we have yet to live will carry me on with hope
and fill the future with a million tiny points of light.
Can you see the true goal, prize of perfect harmony?
It's not about the song or success or the company 
you keep or even the finish line. It's the spirit
of the games. It's how you run the race and all 
the times you drag yourself up from the pit of hell
and open your heart up wide to remember 
all is well, all is well, all is well with our soul.
We are whole, and I love you. If it makes you happy
to be a knight then be the knight
but I implore you still to dream
and remember you are a king.

Perhaps life is nothing but a dream.
I am glad to have met you in mine,
even if our miracle is still on ice
and I am frozen, frozen in time.
I call the competition and look to hope's horizon,
standing there beside you and cheering you on
from here, no matter the year or all the small stories.
I'll leave it all on the course and know I have
done my best and passed the test and loved
having had the opportunity to be a participant 
in this, our lost love story and two flickering
and star-crossed lives, flames of fury,
burning bright and Olympic in proportion.