The joss stick propped in the cheap, green aluminum window well is burning. The juniper smoke curls into a tiny dust devil ascending and, then, disappears into the night …the point of light seen from across the room out of the corner of the eye …the smoke …then, the fragrance drifting through the chilly air. A straight line of gray ash on the tiled sill remains in the morning …a visible sign that night has passed …a fragile artifact wiped up into a smudge of ashy grit on the damp cloth …gray rinse water as it washes down the drain …a quiet act of mourning …unseen …undetected.

The night has been cold and foggy. The watchman huddles in the unheated guardhouse with its frozen windows below the kitchen. He will make a pass up and down the hill through the night. I see his light before him as I wander about during the night, but he is invisible in the blackness …the patterns of stars, far off points barely seen through the mist …nearly invisible, too …careless dots on dull black paper.

They come for me. Soon, the car is slipping on the ice barely avoiding mountains of fodder piled in the middle of the country road. I’ve left China behind a little later.