"marriage," lawrence raab

Years later they find themselves talking
about chances, moments when their lives
might have swerved off
for the smallest reason.
What if
I hadn’t phoned, he says, that morning?
What if you’d been out,
as you were when I tried three times
the night before?
Then she tells him a secret.
She’d been there all evening, and she knew
he was the one calling, which was why
she hadn’t answered.
Because she felt—
because she was certain—her life would change
if she picked up the phone, said hello,
said, I was just thinking
of you.
I was afraid,
she tells him. And in the morning
I also knew it was you, but I just
answered the phone
the way anyone
answers a phone when it starts to ring,
not thinking you have a choice.

-- marriage, lawrence raab

another softball practice tonight; it was much colder and not as successful, personally, as the last. but as I came charging past home plate, one of our Rigoletto cast members, who came to join us for the evening -- a cast member for whom, earlier in the day, I had tracked down an Ernani score -- said, in surprise, "you run like a deer."