Who Can Tell With Basketball?

I ask her “What if we went
to a marriage counselor like Melinda and Richard did,
what would you say was the problem with me?”
She takes her gaze off the garden
in the backyard and smiles briefly, then answers
without hesitation, “You’re needy and a complainer.”
I am stunned into silence. She looks
back at her beloved garden,
the new colors beginning to sparkle
in the spring sun. I unmute the basketball game,
the Utah Jazz are beating the San Antonio Spurs
by five points. It’s the end
of the third quarter. Then I mute it again.
“Well, I’d say, in case you’re interested,
that you were cold and distant
and don’t like to be touched. If you were more
romantic and giving and nicer to me
I wouldn’t be so needy all the damn time.”
She looks at me kind of funny, screws up her mouth.
“So your neediness is my fault.”
“Yes, it is your fault.”
“OK,” she says and we both laugh.
I unmute the game again and twenty minutes later
the Spurs win by five points. Funny
how sometimes things can turn around so quickly.