We play scrabble once a year
It’s always the best day of the year
We do simple best, but we choose complicated lives
For the chance that we might get it right– this next time.
How easy is it?
To stop.
To put some silken tofu
In the oven
And talk to each other
While it slowly hardens
Sometimes, I watch them slowly harden
As we dry up in conversation
Things that they would say freely to me a week ago
Are now barricaded by brand new reservations.
Let’s push each other away, it’s so much easier.
Until the next year we play scrabble,
And we’re soft again, like the tofu
That is not yet subject to heat, or hardening.