My city has a crush
on its hockey team.
The girls wear sweaters
that don’t fit
with names of burly Swedish men
on their backs
and the boys re-hash the games
like the dismantling
of a first date.
Everyone is flushed
with giddiness and beer
and cars honk
with collective abandon.
A part of me
is tempted to witness it all
with wry distance
sweeping it up into piles
of anthropological data.
But I can’t help myself,
I am infatuated
like the rest of them,
infusing it with excessive meaning
hoping the love affair
will last.