The words were walls.
The words were buildings
different ones
that we each had entered separately
and locked between us.
The words we said were trenches
were missiles
were hurled at each other
not in anger
but in something more resigned.

The words were mines
silently laying in wait
waiting excruciatingly
for their time to unload
each vicious payload.
The words were dark.
The words were dangerous.
The words were deadly
and doomed all around them
destroying the structures we had hoped to build
in the paragraph above.

The words,
it seemed,
were all we had left
late in the evening
when all the more sensible options
had been exhausted.
At the end,
we had words.