Mango

By BEA AGBI

I didn’t want the mango. I didn’t

want it I was full Just let me have a bit

but my mother said no bites,

peeling and putting it

into my hands, yellowredgreen soft

and malleable in its ripeness, eat

the whole thing. 

I had forgotten 

where dried sugar mango peels, mango

slushies, mango cubes, mango

popsicles and mango ice cream

come from. I had forgotten

that they are not the real fruit but

imitations of it, because a mango requires

both hands, lips sticky with juice 

and spit, a tongue caught in the

web of fibers, and no time to

wipe your fingers clean until the

next bite, then the next next next until

all that’s left is the seed. I had forgotten surrender,

or perhaps I had never known it just as the mango

didn’t know it was falling from the tree

until it realized it was hoping to land somewhere soft

as a patch of grass, or someone’s hands.

So I ask the seed to forgive me of the factory, truck beds, 

farmers’ market stands, car trunk, knife’s edge and trash can.

As I shut the lid, I pray it will fall through metal and plastic 

to someday find its way back 

to dirt. To dirt

and dust I wish you return.

Writer | Bea Agbi ’26 | bagbi26@amherst.edu

Editor | Eliza Becker ’26 | ebecker26@amherst.edu