When her eyes sharpened to the present moment again, there was no one in sight. The sun was pushing the rain off, but couldn’t seem quite able to find true yellow, such that the light and the clusters of buildings in it looked nauseous.

Dune slipped a silver cigarette case out of her back pocket and pulled out a spliff. She rolled her own magic cigarettes, dusting a generous pinch of weed over her tobacco. The one purchase she’d made with Paulie’s guilt money was a few pounds of potent shake from Joe, the white boy who had run a dispensary over on Gratiot. Neither of them commented on the massive purchase, both knowing she was stocking up in case he got sick before she could visit again.

She was even saving the seeds. Just in case.

She propped the sole of her left foot against the brick wall behind her and let the weight drop back in her hips, adjusting where her jeans were pulling tighter than she expected. She didn’t want to fill out her pants, spill belly over the tight waist. She didn’t want any part of the burden of being a body, lugging herself around, betraying her mother with each breath.

When her spliff had disappeared into fire and a spacious calm in her belly, Dune closed her eyes and let the quiet fill her up, let the solid weight of the wall hold her.

3. This line is borrowed from Detroit Activist Mama Sandra Simmons of Hush House.

chapter eighteen: Grievers

Dune felt the first town hall participant coming down the hall through the glass, movement in her periphery. She stepped further away from the entrance.

The door burst open and the guardsmen stepped out, heads bowed, walking quickly to their van parked in the guest drop-off zone across a threadbare red carpet.

Dune considered taking one of the rolling golden luggage racks as her skateboard home. She tried to imagine it, pushing herself down Woodward, flying, the luggage rack a paper airplane, her as the aerodynamic nose. She couldn’t bring the ground into her vision, even with effort.

Soon the whole room was streaming by, a river of survivors respecting her downturned eyes. Elouise stepped out of the doors last, holding a roll of paper in one hand, two massive purses balancing her wide shoulders, her sensible nurse shoes at odds with her bright dress, a cape somehow over and under it all. She saw Dune and set down her load.

A massive smile started at the horizon of Elouise’s upper lip and sunrose up her face, only the faintest grief pulling the outer edges of her full lips back down. The gap in her teeth was radiant. Dune found a big smile reflecting from her own mouth before she knew it. Elouise reached her arms out first and pulled Dune into the amber scented pillow of her breasts.