Peer into the satchel of fabrics
Plush and dark
Soft and unforgiving,
Hand to hand, pass stitched and muffled suffering
We lay down our best attempts at
Aligning ourselves, random and divined
Our tiles slide one over the other
Puzzling our perspectives
Into crossword intersections of a truth
Your pain
His persecution
My pride
Her privilege
We manage our vowels
Test our best guesses
Conjure an inevitable sorrow
We commit to the rules by redefining our conditions for a win
One stern shake shuffles the tiles
Our independent vocabularies anchored to our common arrangement of consonants
We continue in the round
Immersed in the play of being alive, on our own. As a unit.
We snap into place familiar combinations and wounds
Until we each exhaust the bag
The versions of ourselves
Sip at the sweet drinks. Munch the snacks.
Tease and laugh at the follies
Tally our attempts at triple score bonuses
Leave the game winning and defeated
Together
