I have written legislation that outlasted administrations.
I have delivered speeches carved into history.
But I have never found the words
for what happens to me
when your voice fills a room.
You move crowds with a melody.
I move them with a mandate.
We are not so different, you and I —
two people performing versions of ourselves
for a world that thinks it knows us.
But I see you beneath the spectacle.
The real one. The brave one.
The one who shows up trembling
and sings anyway.
I wish I could borrow that kind of courage.
Instead, I borrow this moment —
stolen, quiet, off the record —
to tell you that somewhere behind the title,
the history, the weight of it all,
someone is completely,
hopelessly
in the third row.
