“We are beginning to understand that we have souls.”—Grace Lee Boggs1

Everything green bursts forth, breaking open any previous container—seed, body, concept, moment. Death is transition, it offers many faces, many sounds and smells, many distinct ways that a living thing can suddenly be absent from a body, which, stripped of the most obvious and appealing miracle, becomes a haven for any creature that can manage the stench.

Death is the way the old let go, leaving the young something to cleave to, to make new as they crawl out of the earth, becoming the home for the next life, unimaginable until it begins to breathe.

1. Grace Lee Boggs was an American revolutionary who dedicated her life to studying and organizing for liberation.

chapter one: Burn

Dune was new to touching death.

The body was heavy in a way it had never been in life; dancing in the kitchen to Marvin Gaye, holding Dune close to its breasts, thick and floating.

The body had a strange odor; ripe compost, late summer. In the last two weeks it had been impossible to keep the body clean as it died, impossible to acknowledge that the body was dying, even though the face was already frozen into a mask of grief.

Dune pulled it towards her now, her hands under the stiff arms, which she had never consciously touched when the body was alive. She found herself surprised at the cool absence of life, expecting warmth to be hiding still in those tight fatty places.

The body was resistant, as if tied to the bed. She pulled again and again, until the body finally came with her, dropping her down as all the weight kept its pact with gravity. The legs flopped open and Dune winced, the smell between the thighs sharp, familiar.

She rolled away, stood up, stepped backwards, some half-sacred instinct quieting her curses. She kicked the baseboard once and gathered her breath. Then she commenced dragging the body to the bedroom door, pulling alternately at the arms, or at the rug beneath.

Soon she was sweating everywhere and her back hurt. She noticed her physical discomfort from a distance, her self tiny and numb inside of her skin. This was so different from the weight she often lifted, trying to carve the softness from her body. When she reached the doorframe, she slumped against it, resting for a moment, the body leaning against her shins.

Sallow light whispered through dark oak blinds, leaving slat shadows on a hardwood floor cluttered with small rugs her mother had brought home from Morocco. Her father had splurged on the blinds in order to take naps. Now the bed’s brass frame burned with sun. Dust motes, set wild by Dune’s labor, caught in the beams, the only motion. The room looked quiet, peaceful.

Her mother would never have let the bed be a mess in daylight.