Excerpt from 'Fireflies':

I am awake. But I was asleep. Now I can see because my lids have lifted back. But I was asleep before this happened.

*

In a poor country, you share rooms as you live in them, sleep in them. In this room are my uncle, my auntie and my cousin. My other cousins share the other room. We all sleep on woven mats, laid on wooden boards of a wooden bed, placed atop a wooden floor in a wooden house. That’s the way it is.

*

I am awake. The yellow plastic mosquito net hangs over our four shapes. It inhales and exhales with our combined breath. I listen to my uncle snuffle, my auntie grind her teeth, my cousin sleep with his mouth open, drool soaking like a shadow on his pillow. I hold my breath in my chest. I don’t want to wake him up.

*

There is a trick to setting up a mosquito net in a mosquito-infested country. After retrieving it and unfolding it, find the four loops attached to the four corners of the net. These loops allow you to suspend the net above the bed — it looks like a floaty, transparent box, a ghost-present containing semi-glimpsed secrets. It will be necessary to have four long pieces of string or rope or strips of fabric torn from an old favourite dress. Thread each of these through its own plastic loop and tie each one securely. Take the other end of one length and tie it into a loop. Repeat with the other three pieces. In four different spots of the room, found on either the walls or even the roof, there are nails on which to hook the loops of string, or rope, or strip of fabric. Then you will need a mosquito killer. Lift one of two flaps and enter the inner yellow room of the mosquito net, with its soft walls and airy feel and holes that no insect can wriggle through. Once inside and on your knees, spray all four corners to kill any unwanted insects the net may have caught. If you do not, the mosquitoes will sing their high-pitched song in your ears all night, stick their wicked, black needles through your skin and draw your blood deep until they are fat with it.

*

The moon is fattening in the sky. I cannot see it but I can see its effect. Its light silvers my entire right side and as it rises to cover me, it creeps along, greedily, dragging itself over to my cousin. It will never reach my auntie, who lies next to him, or my uncle, who lies next to her. They do not feel it. Its touch is barely there as it settles on his skin. Maybe it won’t wake him.