Valentine's Day 1985

The photograph comes,
and I glue it
to the galley sheet.
No story follows,
just an empty canister
in the pneumatic tube.
The letters
X and V and E
sometimes appear,
and a newsreel
with trees
and empty space with sun.
Your nakedness gestures
from the dirt like a worm
sliced in half
on the street
by a shoe.
Who are you?

Months after
this nightmare
I saw your face
in the glass
at the bar
where the criminals
play chess
and mix tea
with synthehol.
I thought
you might know me,
but you looked
into my eyes
and turned away blankly.
The drink at the bar
didn't stop
my hands from shaking.
That wasn't you.
It wore
the red sash
of the elite,
pure,
virginal
Party soldier.
I'll go to
the thought police
and confess
this crime of words
I should not think
and beg them to fix me.

They'll incinerate
from my mind
your picture
with no headline
whose existence
means death
and desire
that subvert
the state.
In that room I love,
they'll make me right
as the rat gnaws my eyes.
and those words
I cannot think
will rot like skin
and you'll go back
to being what you are:
ghost of a past
that never was.

(c) copyright 2012 Charles David Miller. All rights reserved.