Love Letter Day X

I bought a bag of dried mangoes from Whole Foods recently, and could tell from the color of the fruit that they were untreated, or had very little sugar added, or whatever I needed to know about it as a snack to feel like it was a healthy decision.

I’m glad I bought these mangoes, because I ended up forgetting to eat lunch that day, and as I drove myself home from work, was hit with the most miserable hunger. Luckily the bag of dried mangoes were on my passenger seat. I leaned over to grab and tear through the bag, and pulled out a handful of large shreds. I voraciously chewed on the absurdly leathery mango. 

How can I say this next part without it coming out terribly obscene.

The flavor of this mango made me think immediately of you. I imagined when the unique scent of dehydrated mango came through, after an initial onslaught of sweetness and then tartness, that this is what you taste like. I was so overpowered by the scent of mango that I recklessly dug the packaging back out and read the 6 point type on the back while driving down Kelly Avenue. Where on earth were these mangoes from? Why do they taste like this? 

Funny thing. I hadn’t noticed but these were apparently something known as “Amelie Mangoes.” I’m not going to look it up. It doesn’t matter what the actual provenance of these things are, of course. It was just a notion that Whole Foods might know a person’s flavor. I already knew it.

I remember the first time I had passionfruit, having a similar revelation. I must have been 14 or 15 and it was in an iced tea. My heart exploded. This was the sexiest flavor in the universe. Early Grey tea, also something of a revelation. And the first lychee I’d ever eaten. The bananas I ate in Bali. Peaches my mother grew on a mourning orchard in the half acre of hillside that came with the house in which I grew up and others died. They all emulate a very particular scent. They all taste like bodies in love.

And the flavor is actually in myself. I have a very specific feeling (read: flavor) that I have known the world through my mouth since before my life and will after I die. The inheritance of a yearning botany. Blithely fragrant. The missing register of a high definition video, that for some reason shows up on a cassette, to indicate we are present.

Once you taste it, you will know you are in my mouth.