A Love Letter to Mango Season
A short, perhaps weird, perhaps not always reading like mangoes, open love letter to the yellow fruit
A shriek reminiscent of a slasher movie's first victim echoes through my home once a year. Shattering the peacefulness of birdsong and warm air, common for the ‘surprise heatwave’ that strikes the UK almost every June. A familiar foreigner has appeared on my kitchen bench, they visit every year, sitting untouched, emitting a smell that instantly brings me back to being a child and sends tingles from my heart to the rest of my body. Anyone would think I am shrieking from fear, each year I hear footsteps running to me to check what is wrong, and then laughter soon followed.
I am shrieking from excitement, a happiness that has no other way of getting out other than a burst of noise from the deepest parts of my body, as if the devil itself is screaming ‘glutton’ from within. He knows exactly what sin I am about to commit. For Eve, there was the apple, but for me, it is the mango.
Some mango trees have lived for 300 years. My family tree spans more than 300 years across South Asia, across nations that have made the mango their national fruit. I don’t think I am the first girl to shriek over the mango harvest, to carelessly rip into the flesh, allowing the juices to drip everywhere. Face. Fingers. Feet. Floor. A gluttonous, messy, un-ladylike…
