Two hundred and forty days; the longest that you have ever spent away from the island. Spend enough time away and you find that your thoughts about your homeland begin to change. You begin to imagine that you have become a different person and that there is no way that you could fit back in to that life you were living before you left.
Then you come back home, and all of these illusions disappear. The airport doors open and the hot dry season air rushes in and hits you - 'bap' - right in your stomach. Within moments, all of the old feelings and sensations come rushing back. The old European city that you have just left starts to feel like a distant dream, and you begin to have the strange impression that you never left the island in the first place.
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You wake early the next morning, your body still wired to foreign time, and you suddenly remember how wild and sacred the dawn can feel in the Caribbean. You step out of your front door to the low chorus of yellow breasted kiskadees singing out their names: kiss-kee-dee, kiss-kee-dee, kiss-kee-dee. The pale tropical sun is nestled in that place where the two hills meet. The valley is cool and expectant.
You take a seat on the damp wooden bench, the one that sits in the middle of your small front garden, and you let your gaze fall on the thick tufts of bright red ixora flowers that line the bottom of the chain link fence. You had forgotten the way that the cool dewdrops sit like little glass pearls on the petals. It is possible, you remember, to suck the sweet nectar from the ixora stems.
The dogs begin to bark; pots and pans bang together in the neighbour's kitchen; the bright red garbage truck creeps past your house.
You are home again.
