Denis

All the evidence of the island’s slow life collects once we pass through check-in and finally

board the small plane: a rusty fishing trawler nearing shore; taxi drivers with one leisurely

hand on the phone; the omnipresence of Coca Cola and flip flops. Our flight is forty-five

minutes late. The landscape does not allow itself to be rushed.

Through the weathered porthole the sea is bright green which does not make sense to the

eye condiEoned to grey English swells. It spills unhurriedly against white shores which

become green hills and then smaHerings of white cloud.

The froth atop pina coladas looks like sea foam and the coffee tastes like the soil. Suncream streams in the oppressive heat and there is cinnamon under my fingernails, scratched from the bark of trees which smell like spice racks. Mosquitos ravage my legs into an itchy fever.

At nearly seven PM every evening, the light reddens before it leaves. A silhouetted dinghy

lands tomorrow’s dinner in an ice box ready to be barbecued, marinated, cured: tuna,

marlin, snapper, emperor. Robust bodies of iridescent silver and muscle are refashioned into neat boxes of sashimi.

At night the landscape with its screech of birdcall is breathing, restive, threatening to

swallow me. The dark veils terrible things: night-time raids on soft vulnerable eggs, shelled

critters patrolling for the feeble tread of hatchlings. There are brutalities on tender flesh and eyes which have not yet felt the surf nor seen the light. At this time, the landscape is

unknowable to us, one of contested territories and silent coups of which the violence is

washed clean by morning.