As my breathing becomes laboured, my heart beats faster.

As my heart quickens, I shake, and my palms become sweaty.

My mind forms fearful fragments of thought.

I feel pushed to the max, stressed and exhausted;

Incredibly relieved, I will soon begin a new adventure.

I am excited to the point of losing self control.



For the moment it is just me and forty-something other new soldiers.

There is only my mother, my aunt, my best friend and a hundred other spectators.

Witnesses to the moment of freedom.

In this instant I declare, “I told you!

All you non-believers, I told you!”

Although silently I hold my head high and proud, with a hint of a grin;

I march as I had never marched.

“Oh! Canada” blares from the speakers, and my heart breaks.

I was something else, in that moment.



Yet on that day thousands of kilometres away, you pushed this paper.

This same paper, though months later, that I am now charged with.

I remember everything that happened to me with such clarity,

Yet you cast it aside as you would all the other indefinite seconds in your lifetime.

With a rush of emotion, my memories fill my head and I relive that moment in time,
again.