She loved a man who loved words
as competition, tiled board games given
expedience electronically, so many ways

to play the order of letters out each
evening while screen noise projects its shows
and sirens, its men flanked by beauty

as bodies, the female form a dressing.
So few ways to say each word in a sentence
and mean happiness, not having to sit

alone after dark, this man who puzzled
out the exotic and archaic from a simple
alphabet broken up and assigned value

by novelty, the most present to have
the least worth entirely by design.