Unanimous

Unanimous, they said he would be.
How else do you name someone
who could turn a fastball
into a haiku?
ash against leather
cleats whisper across the dirt
the outfield exhales
Who ran like an apology
you almost caught.
Whose glove opened
like a flower at dusk,
never louder than necessary.

Unanimous,
the way my father stood
in the garage light—
hands black with grease,
voice like gravel and gravity,
saying I could do anything
if I did it right.

Unanimous,
the way her hand
fit in mine
outside the movie theater—
our breath blooming in the cold,
her eyes already knowing
what mine had just begun to hope.

Unanimous,
the sound of summer—
screen doors yawning open,
baseball on the radio,
ice melting in mason jars,
nothing in the world
asking us to be older
than we were.

Unanimous,
the voice of the crowd rising
before the crack of the bat,
because we already knew
it would land
where no one could touch it.
the swing is still there
somewhere in the shape of wind
but no hands to guide

Unanimous,
except it wasn’t.
One hand stayed still.
One voice withheld
from the record.
But I remember.
I remember the hand in mine,
the sound of the garage radio,
the curve of the swing
that made us all rise
before the ball had even left the bat.
None of it counts.
Not in any official way.
But I keep the box score
they never wrote.
And in mine,
everything that should have been—
was.
Unanimous.

ERIC TAVEREN is a speculative and literary fiction writer based in Minneapolis. He holds an MFA from Hamline University, and his work has appeared in F(r)iction, Great Weather for Media, and Avalon Literary Review, among others. Living with aphantasia, he crafts worlds through words, building what his mind cannot see.