My back-door neighbour breaks into a vallenato: el dolor que un día de mí se fue… I stand and see her scatter something from a sieve. Then the hens appear. It’s them I hear clucking early in the morning, as if they too had something to complain about. From the background comes the insistent cheepcheepcheep. I smile in case the woman can see me. There’s that other noise. I check – is it already time for the metallic racket to start up again? Saws, drills. I peek over from the other side of the balcony.

I can make out three different structures in the works. The first is this building less than twenty metres from my house, where a builder is already greeting me with a ‘Morning, mami. Psst, reina.’ I can’t respond or he’ll get the wrong idea. Other noises reach me from farther off: fifty metres, a hundred. The sound of sawing, of banging on concrete. The breeze blows in and I see the banana fronds shake against the fence above the wall. On my timeline, that banana tree would be eternal, constant. It’s always been there and will be there forever. Now there’s a second one: it has flowers with enormous purple bulbs and carries two fat green bunches. The rooster crows and I react: I pick up the basket and clothes pegs and head back inside. I got up before dawn, but it’s already hot. Hanging laundry to dry, I think, is one of the most original things I’ve done in fifteen years.

I hadn’t been in touch with anyone from the island since practically my last year at school, but I wrote to a native girl in my class, Juleen Brown Martínez, who’s very active on social media. I’m waiting to hear back; maybe she’s still around.

I finish my cereal and oats. My blood sugar is at 115. Under 130. Over 70. It’s 8:20 in the morning. I look down at the empty plate, so familiar that it sparks years of recollections. I open the tap to wash the dishes. It doesn’t startle me much anymore; after endless insistence, the water tanker finally came by to refill the cistern.