she wrote it on the back
of a crumpled recycled napkin:

morse code
sign language
braille

she read it in the print
of a leopard's skin
infested with hypothetical maggots

it wasn't legible.
but legibility, he said,
was a tire stuck in wet asphalt,
"cemented to communism";

he was lying to himself.
communism was his favorite past-time,
sucking the not-so-hypothetical utters
of a not-so-realistic cash cow.

but he wasn't important.
only you were, sitting in
that crystallized blue booth,
smiling at me, deviously,
removing strands from your eyes, while you

wrote your thoughts on the back
of that crumpled, recycled napkin.