Sunday night, Super Bowl XL.

The testosterone raged, the muscles bulged, and the players lovingly fondled the taut skin of the football. Oh! were I that ball, being held in a man’s arms, so tight… so tight. Willie Parker desires that ball! He grasps it passionately, as if all the pleasure in the world were able to be channeled from the ball, through his fingertips, into his entire body. If I ever were so lucky to ever know again such love as that which that ball knew then… when he ran a record setting 75-yard run into the end zone. The end zone. A place I am all too familiar with. But enough about me.

Earlier in the game, not to be ignored, is the controversial completion by Roethlisberger that surely made the blood pump fervently to all of our heads, from our hearts, to our heads, and back again. All of our worst fears and hopes becoming simultaneously possible all at the same time, we can become overwhelmed with emotion. Was it over the line? Was it not close enough? What could we have done differently? The answer is nothing. Not now. Now it’s too late. All we can do now is watch the replay and confirm the touchdown.

So many good tackles by the Steelers defense. I wish I were a Seahawk, tackled, crushed, rushed at by the steel bodies of perspiring men. At the moment of impact I would savor the physical manifestation of all of my emotional distress— my flesh gnashing against muscle against the vinyl appliqués of my assailants, my ribs inverted on themselves, piercing, penetrating my vital soft bits— right before my unworthy soul leaves my never-adequate body, where it would then join the ranks of others who have loved and lost, and then died too soon— dead of a broken heart. I am like the Seahawk. I am now flying, sorrowful and free, above the heads of those who will never know a loss as deep and powerful as ours.