Marriage

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.



by:     LAWRENCE RAAB