The fires have started up the street.  It is hard to miss the seventh month; you can always smell it, in the ash on the wind.  “We’re not burning anything this year,” said my mother.  “It is all right if you are at a new house so long you don’t start, once you start you have to do it every year.”  My grandmother burnt her last offerings a year ago; “I told them we were moving, that I was too old and you girls don’t know how to do it properly.”  What, did we leave a forwarding address?  “The ones who know us will know where to go.” My mother is a Buddhist and doesn’t believe in this; the older generation are Taoists, she says, they’re confused.  “In any case, we don’t know who used to be here.  You have to be sure before you burn for them.”  Our god is a man who sat under a tree and realised all men could be as gods if they tried.  Or, since there was nothing of the divine in his godhood, perhaps just better men. 

It is the seventh month, when the heat is heavy and the smoke is thick, there is getai on Orchard Road and bodies in the reservoirs, in the morning you sit in the tense, tapping office waiting for someone to do something crazy, in the night you walk home and if you hear your name called you don’t ever turn around.  Adele is playing in the kitchen, it’s reaching a fever pitch and it’s bringing me out of the dark.  To this island then I came, burning burning burning burning.  Thou pluckest me out, thou pluckest, burning.