The Chinese Checker Players

When I was six years old
I played Chinese checkers
   with a woman
who was ninety-three years old.
She lived by herself
in an apartment down the hall
   from ours.
We played Chinese checkers
every Monday and Thursday nights.
While we played she usually talked
about her husband
who had been dead for seventy years
and we drank tea and ate cookies
   and cheated.

-- Richard Brautigan