Elouise felt larger somehow than she had yesterday. She filled the porch, the yard, the whole street up with her energy. Up close, her face was at war, mouth tilted up in the tight pull of a grimace, eyes grief stricken, seeping, looking into the far distance of the next building. Elouise’s hands gripped the arms of the chair, pale with effort, a sign that she’d felt it coming. Her head wrap and top were a golden hue with a green and fuchsia print of leaves and feathers.

Dune wanted to bring her friend a sweater, it was too cold to be out in just the shirt. She stepped closer, wiping sheets of tears from her face. As she stepped onto the porch, she heard the soft whisper-groan from Elouise’s mouth, “dih, diiiiiiiiih.”

Dune stepped closer, drawn in by the soft breathy sound. Elouise’s mouth was moving slowly. Most new grievers, if they had words, spoke them quickly, repeating them, pouring them out.

“Nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu,” exhaled out, a sigh. “Teeeeeeeeee.”

Dune shook her head. She wouldn’t speak, she knew asking didn’t matter. Elouise was sitting here, but now she wasn’t.

“Diiiihhh.” Breath. “Nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhh.” Breath. “Teeeee.” Again. And again.

Dune felt close to understanding, on the edge of a foreign tongue.

She was small again, watching Sesame Street on Saturday mornings, cereal bowl cupped in her hands to drink the sugary milk that was her highlight of the meal, rapt, egged on by puppets as two pieces of a word she was about to learn crept closer and closer to each other on the tv screen. She wanted the word, whole, on her tongue. When she got it, often before they had figured it out, she would yell it to the foolish puppets. Why couldn’t they see it yet?

She squatted down in front of Elouise, looking directly into her friend’s absent eyes. She watched Elouise’s full lips move ever so slightly around the words. Alive and ghost.

Dignity.

“Dignity.” Dune heard it and heard it again, so clearly now.

She turned to see what Elouise’s view was from this porch.

Across the street, lot after lot was overrun with wild trees and undergrowth, spilling onto the sidewalk, bursting through an old fence until they were completely contained, intertwined, swallowed by the bush. There was a playground beyond the fence, a slide that descended into ferns, a small tree slipping its branches up between the slats of a wood and chain bridge. There was a recently discarded mattress creeping from the sidewalk into the jungle. The wilderness was not satisfied in the ground, it pushed up through the concrete borders, through the street, long grass, gnarly roots, wild, everywhere. Down the block, two burnt shells of houses. And over the trees, a steeple. Dune tried to remember which church was there.