written in stone

all the gravestones were blank
that morning when the bus didn't come.
had they been fading & we just
didn't notice? we were children on
the ghost hill that overlooked town.
winter, in the closet. summer dying 
like a road worm in the after-rain sun.
we went around looking for language.
evidence of our memories. all the shops
had empty open windows. i thought of
the cicadas who burst from their
own bodies. was the town molting or
were we lodged in her teeth? 
i wrote a poem once about foxes 
that the corn fields managed to eat.
they bit down & chewed all pop rocks 
on the tongue. you got the kitchen knives
& i watched as you tried to write
new names into the headstones. we took turns
deciding who was part of the soil.
someone rang the church bells. i do not know
who because we hadn't seen an adult 
in years. an ice cream truck sound played
but we could never catch the vehicle
to beg for something cool & sweet. 
the leaves changed. the dead remained dead
despite our attempts at necromancy. 
there were still landlords somewhere.
the people who owned the blank shops
who popped champagne bottles at night.
we never saw them either. sometimes though we
broke the law & slipped into the empty stores
to pretend to be a record store
or a cookie shop. a bell hung above the door. 
sometimes it would ring & we would hide
just to find no one else there.