A couple faces one another
as if in conversation.
This is how they were found.
Now they lie in vitrines
like fish in facing tanks.
Could not speak if they
could speak. They were
dressed for their death passage,
not to be specimens in glass.
Her bare breasts shine
like doorknobs. Linen
wraps for the poor, gold
masks for the rich, eyes
so lifelike excavators
gasped when they brushed
the dust away. The revolution
left no money for excavation;
thousands of mummies
still lie in burrowed tunnels
under the houses and roads.
The dead do not ponder
revolutions, but they like
to sometimes be considered.
Small mourning statues
were found in the tombs,
meant to eternally weep
at their side. One man
is a merchant with a Horus crown.
Tolemic, someone says.
Our son points to another’s
thickly outlined eyes.
He is awake, he says,
but does not answer.
A stone girl, five years old,
too poor for a golden crown;
my daughter, also five,
asks if they’re the same
size—yes, almost exactly.
For a while, this is how
our children will think of death:
gilded bodies that keep their shape,
wide-eyed and adored.
