Summers Without You

By Sanjana K

This is my letter to you. I miss you a lot. Especially when it’s the middle of summer and the air in

markets reek only of mangoes. I remember how you used to always ask for an extra slice of mango

during dinner, even though your doctor forbade you from eating them. During the summer when I

was 10, I told you that I didn’t know why, but I simply hated that fruit and everything about it; the

colour, the smell, the taste, and you told me that I was still too young to appreciate things and

laughed with mango juice dripping down the side of your lips.

Most of my life, after you died, feels like a bad dream. Sometimes, I want to turn back time to when

you were healthy and I was just a little kid. There are days when the heat makes it unbearable to live

the rest of the day, but I live anyway. I long to sit at the edge of your bed and not feel the emptiness

coursing through my veins.

I long to sit next to you again, with my head on your shoulder, as you curse the summer rains for

ruining the taste of mangoes. I long to meet you and hug you and tell you all the secrets I’ve buried

deep inside my bones ever since the day you left me. But I live on, only with the hope that someday,

when the weather is fine, and the wind carries the scent of mangoes and summer rains, we’ll meet

again.

By Sanjana K