our own olympia

a team sitting at opposite sides of the
table-and-bench-welded-into-one.
you and i with our private thoughts and
then public thoughts at every half-hour.
training day would touch night while
we breathed, ate, knew of each other -
because other three men or one woman and
one man teams were rivals to our team focus.

at night the final events took place. and
suddenly like a dream, we were rivals
for no reason [our team was like a dream,
anyway]. i won the sprint, you pulled ahead
at the gate hurdle despite my two-step
technique. there was a draw at the bag
hammer and the railing high jump so we both
won gold medals from the munjen old residents.

but we never equalled our record on that
warm quiet night. citius, altius, fortius
morphed into roll over and die. so our team
lost, you and i lost. never able to jump the
obstacles or outrun the the people that
mattered. quietly in the night you and i parted,
you into your own mind and me into mine,
our team never to reach our own private olympia.