It’s not enough to empty my arms.         Not enough

to fill my arms

—return the plastic bag in the appalled cashier’s hands

and walk away with the toilet paper rolls

and my baby’s birthday balloon that will never decompose

gripped to my chest. I loved

 

running through the graveyard. We laughed my         friends and I

 

and heard the distant shattering:         a melon, a species

dusting our ankles,

dusting the stones I lifted from distant rivers, souvenirs

whose precise origin I forget as ex-lover’s faces,

letting contact

tumble.         We can take a seat. We can name what we burn

—we are not yet endangered, not yet

rare birds.

 

Running through the graveyard we laughed my         friends and I

 

And Spurnia, the ancient Tuscan of excess beauty, has slashed

his face.

And the peeled bananas have already told the jokes and mummify

beneath hills of landfill.

What prevents my arms from swaying in the wind but gracelessness,

what prevents my clumsy steps from scrawling a ransom note but sweet shame?

 

Running through the graveyard we laughed         my friends and I