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A Four Letter Affair
Enthralled by each others anagrams
the barefaced lie
kissing french lips mindlessly
and pronouncing them so very properly
pencils in hand they fill in
the blacks and the whites
rising in the middle of the night
to go to the bathroom
or to the fridge for a drink
or empty the inbox
erasing clues to their deception
They met at the scrabble club
he told her he was getting divorced
she said she was forty nine
across the blanks and double letter squares
they eyed each other bifocally
she liked his blunt fingers and in between
turns imagined them sliding into her undies
which they did at four thirty
on that sticky afternoon
Gradually meet after meet they
came to recognize each other’s little idiosyncracies
the way they re-used four and seven letter words
running up the board across and down
until no space was left to evade what was becoming
as apparent as the way they moved
the tiles around and around
until the hidden words emerged
unpronounceable with no vowels
no communication
no interest
© Johnmichael Simon
2005
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