When she found the first bone in the ashes, she gasped. This was what she’d been looking for. It was slightly rounded in her palm, just longer than her hand—maybe a rib. The bone was warm to the touch, dark, grainy, gray. She slid her thumb along it, rubbing her mother’s ashes into her mother’s bone, breathless at the intimacy of this holding, this touch. She placed the bone to her lips, and then between her teeth, pulling her shirt over her head. She wrapped the bone in soft black cotton.

Dune stood in the yard in her sports bra, boxers, socks and slippers. Her braids held, but she hadn’t touched them since Kama got sick, so free hairs frizzed around her head, catching light. The cicadas were singing all around her, the constant sound of Detroit summers, pulsing, pulsing, singing of life.

She squatted down, brushing her fingers through the ashes with a greater sense of purpose. Each bone she found was distinct from the texture of wood, was smooth and sturdy in her palms. They had danced in the fire, not quite keeping their skeletal order. Here was one of her mother’s long leg bones, these small bones were her mother’s fingers, or perhaps bones from her mother’s feet.

She found an intact section of Kama’s jaw, her mother’s skull.

Hours passed, the sun casting more and more light on the ash, sweat pooling at her elbows, behind her knees. When she couldn’t find any more of her mother, she cradled the bones against her, swaddled in her shirt like an infant. She walked them inside, laying them on Kama’s pillow, over the lace duvet woven with roses.

In the living room she found the two heavy “Chinese antique” vases Kama had bought at a street fair, pale pink, dotted with dragons, tall as her knee. She carried them, one by one, back out to the fire. She scooped handfuls of her mother’s pyre ashes into them and although the remains were light, the vases and presence were heavy. She slowly scooted them back inside. Dune placed one vase on either side of Kama’s bed. They were smudged with her mother, she left them that way.

Holding her hands up like a surgeon, Dune went to the kitchen sink and reluctantly rinsed with warm water. Here was the place. This spot, by the sink, was where her mother had been standing when the sickness came.

Dune looked out the window. What was Kama’s last conscious sight?

Midsummer maples spread wide, clematis vines climbing aggressively up the black brick and balconies of the abandoned apartments across the alley, where the uniformly square windows used to reflect sunsets on good days. Now the glassless windows swallowed light. The stray dog that Dune felt deep affection for was laying against the far wall, tongue soft.

Mostly, all she saw was emptiness.