The guava from the side of the road

by Alexane Ozier-Lafontaine (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Martinique

During the summer of 2019, I got to reconnect with an old friend. I had lived with her for 19 years, but I had been too busy for her taste. She is Caribbean, and was named “Madinina” by her first inhabitants, who described her as “The island of the flowers”. I was leaving her for England soon, and she wished to make life lasting memories with me, so we could always be together. At first, I didn't understand. I thought Madinina and I were already intertwined. I had always been very aware of how lucky I was to breathe the same air as hundred years old luxuriant moss-covered trees. I consistently felt blessed when after a sleepless night, I would sink into the diamond colored black sand next to my house and find my peace of mind again. There I would encounter hens feeding their babies and rooster singing to the top of their lungs, mixing their chant with the delicate sounds of the early morning's shy waves. Most importantly, from my childhood I knew I would live my whole life in Madinina's arms for an elementary reason: every month there was a fruit to eat. December was for my grandma's pomme-cannelles, the most exquisite food on Earth. Its name means 'apple cinnamon', but to me, nothing could ever get close to its taste. July was the time when people would offer bags filled with mangoes, because their trees were dripping in fruits. Even the birds could not eat them all. And very often, people would say 'no thank you', because they already had enough at home. Each new mango invariably felt sweeter than the previous one. But in summer 2019 Madinina wanted to give me a taste of an unique fruit: the guava from the side of the road. One day, I told my boyfriend that he could see the most beautiful sunset of his life if he followed me into my childhood neighborhood. I used to live in a very bourgeois place and therefore most of the houses there had astonishing views, where we could see both the hills and the bays of the island. We sat on the rooftop where I had been sitting years before and the feeling of complete peace entered my body like it never left. and then I remembered: there was an even better place to watch the sunset from, not to mention I was also scared the people who lived in my old house would show up. So I dragged him off the rooftop, walked past the palm threes who were proudly guarding on each side of the rocks-covered alley, and brought him on a green piece of land. On the way there, he had picked a guava that had fallen from someone's fruitful garden to the side of the road. Now, I've never been one to like guavas: I always thought they had too many seeds and not enough sugar in them. but they were my boyfriend's favorite fruit so I thought I would take a bite to make sure I didn’t like them. but this one was perfect; not only it was the best guava I had ever tasted, but it was also one of the best fruits I had ever eaten in my life. It was very juicy, had very few seeds and was so sweet we even ate the skin. I felt like my cells were excited that we had encountered her. From that moment I started feeling like I was floating. The grass under us was delicate, the soil was a little wet but somehow warm. The sun was one of the brightest mix of orange and pink I had ever seen in my life and he wanted to gently soak all of us; the trees, the field who was struggling to stay green and the magnificent cows eating further down. Drown us in its screaming colors. The atmosphere was the most caring mother, keeping us warm. The grass was caressing us. We laid our floating bodies of the ground, looked up to the majestic white cloud who were making love with the rays. And then my island kissed me.