Kavita P. Talib
He nudged me
Play your turn.
Wordlessly,
I simulated like clockwork.
Letters springing into action,
Filling spaces like a glove
Conscious of voids they now had left to fill
Like pauses between us, our In-actions
And a perfect game of scrabble
That balanced proportionally but didn’t make inroads.
Our camaraderie, restricted
To our cryptic wordplay.
the intent… to disallow continuity
And we were able to stall needless tie-ups as astute players.
While the board game seemed effortless, mitigated
Our real conversations seemed inept.
We sat across
As if caught in designs of our own making
And lines that were drawn to divide spaces
Became obstacles to connections rather than bridges…
Armed with letters, and words
Yet neither could string together coherence
That would make sense to the other.
So like pawns in a battle we had not intended
We held on to our powerful words, mutely captive to the grid
Knowing nothing could repair our jigsaw of silences.