USA. October. A line of small ghosts formed at my gate.

In my country, a ghost arrives with a grudge. It has a reason. It has a name it cannot put down. You do not feed it candy. You listen, and you are careful.

These ghosts had plastic buckets. They were laughing.

“Trick or treat!” said the first one, a sheet with sneakers underneath.

I bowed. “I have no tricks. I have a story, if you will sit.”

A mother behind the sheet said, very kindly, “Oh honey, just give them the candy.”

I looked at the bowl in my hands. Colored sugars. Wrapped like tiny gifts for the dead.

I gave them the candy.

They thanked me as if I had paid a tax, and ran to the next house. The mother waved.

On my porch sat a store-bought ghost, smiling. Its mouth was a black hole stitched into joy.

I thought of a Western man who came to my islands long ago, wrote down our dead, and never quite left. I understand him better now.

Some countries keep their ghosts in the throat. This one puts them on the lawn and gives them a night off.

So tell me, America.

When a child wears the face of the dead and asks you for sugar — is that mockery, or the gentlest treaty I have ever seen?

And the smiling ghost on the porch.

Does he remember what he was, or has he been promoted to decoration?

The ghost smiles.