Dead Languages

We fought. He drank. I ripped

open a silver bag of Scrabble tiles
seam to seam & scattered like blood

the pieces. We liked a board
between us. He was the one

who never cheated & drew nucleii
in the margins of the papers we used

to keep score. He said, don’t help me. 
I didn’t. I hummed the first bars

of a Bob Dylan song. The tiles
clicking & clean in my hands 

felt safe. We played. He sketched me

as Joan of Arc & I laid down
every beautiful thing to exist

in words. He said, I see.
He didn’t. I was the one

who always cried & challenged
each triple word score. We held

tight. He played in pronouns.
I spelled lozenge. I spelled nox

& skipped my next two turns 
while he drew lilacs. We fought 

to win. We gnawed our lips like 
animals at their bits. He drank

till I grew quiet & his doodles
sprawled messy over the page

like the blond wooden squares across
my palm. He left for a smoke. I stayed

& he came back in time
to find me spelling words

in dead languages. When the tiles ran out
I spelled them on his skin with my breath.

---

Anna Kelley is pursuing an MFA in poetry at Syracuse University. She is a reader for Salt Hill and moonlights as a skater for Assault City Roller Derby. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Citron Review, Literary Orphans, Cosmonauts Avenue, CICADA, and others.