Cacophony of Fruits: A Dialogue Between Tongue and Ghost

List your top 5 favorite fruits.

Mango

You knew I’d start with mango.
Of course, you did.
I can taste your smirk from across the orchard of memory.
You, with your sticky fingers
and July-drunk tongue,
biting through saffron pulp like it owed you answers.
Did I ever tell you
that when I was six,
I dreamt mangoes spoke in riddles,
and one said: “Ripe is not the end, it’s the applause.”
So I waited—
for the day my teeth would play sitar
on the golden gut of an Alphonso.
You waited too, didn’t you?
Waited like a thief beside a sunlit window,
waiting for scent to ripen into sin.
We never washed them, did we?
We wanted dirt and dream
in equal measure.

Pomegranate

Then came the ruby-lipped pomegranate,
you sly cartographer of secrets.
Why do you always laugh when I say pomegranate?
As if it’s the name of a scandal.
Which, maybe, it is.
You were the kind of child who peeled slowly—
one seed at a time,
like unlocking red prayers.
I was the savage.
Cracked it open with elbows and impatience.
I was war; you were ritual.
Do you remember that time we bled together,
staining the table, your laugh a garden,
mine a grenade?
Each aril a portal,
a code,
a heartbeat wearing lipstick.
“You’re eating Persephone’s breath,” you said once.
And I said,
“So let winter come.”

Black Grapes

You’d hate me for choosing grapes third,
but you always hated their whispers.
Whispers? Yes.
Black grapes don’t speak in words.
They hum.
A slow bassline under the wine-colored skin,
like jazz trying not to be heard.
You said they reminded you of eavesdropping.
I said they tasted like withheld affection.
We both bit into them anyway,
pulling back the skin with tongue-tweezers,
sucking pulp like secrets.
At that diner near the train station,
you ordered black grape soda
just to prove your childhood wrong.
It didn’t work.
It tasted like lies with carbonation.
I drank it anyway,
tasting your rebellion like old ink
on new tongues.
You watched me,
half-smiling like a ghost with taste buds.

Guava

Guava is an argument.
Don’t you deny it.
We argued over guavas like philosophers with kitchen knives.
You: peel it, salt it, slice it.
Me: bite it whole like a wild epiphany.
You couldn’t stand the crunch—
said it sounded like teeth chewing teeth.
But I loved that violence,
that green drumroll before the pale pink opera.
You were soft about things,
and guava was not.
Guava was a fist inside a fruit.
You once wrote a poem
about the guava tree in your grandmother’s backyard.
I found it in your drawer—
creased, ashamed, beautiful.
“Guava smells like someone you’ll never kiss again,”
you had written.
I kissed it anyway.
The poem, I mean.
It tasted like loss dipped in vitamin C.

Chikoo

You called it mud-apple.
I called it brown velvet.
Chikoo is where we broke even.
Both of us—greedy, reverent,
spooning brown mush into reluctant mouths.
I told you chikoo is what monks eat in limbo.
You said it’s what grandmothers hoard in sari folds.
Truth is, chikoo never asks for applause.
It just is—
a quiet hum,
a beige lullaby on tired evenings.
You once fell asleep mid-bite.
Cheeks sticky, dreams fermenting.
I watched the chikoo fall from your hand,
split open like a sigh.
Its seed—smooth as betrayal.
That’s the thing about chikoo:
it’s too tender to hate
and too dull to crave.
But when it’s gone,
you taste the absence like a missed note.

The Pulp Between Us

We are not just mouths,
we are libraries of flavor—
tongue-stained narratives,
chewed philosophies.
You always asked why
I arranged fruits like tarot cards.
Because they predict who we’ll become.
You—the one who loved
the architecture of taste,
spooned meaning from every bite.
Me—devouring chaos,
ripe, rotten, or in between.
And in the middle—
a fruit bowl neither of us washed
because we liked our metaphors dusty.

You Say, “What About Banana?”

Banana is a cliché.
You don’t like clichés.
But you’ll eat them in smoothies.
I’ve seen you—guilt and all.
Banana’s not a fruit, it’s a filler.
It listens too well.
Doesn’t argue.
Doesn’t stain.
You said, “Banana is Switzerland in the war of hunger.”
I said, “Then I want conflict.”
So we let banana sit.
Overripe, sulking in silence.
I later found it blackened,
like a lie you told me once.

Final Bite: Memory Peels Back

I never asked you to list yours.
Not aloud.
You don’t believe in rankings,
you said once—
life’s not a playlist.
But still, I know.
Mango.
Pomegranate.
Grapes.
Guava.
Chikoo.
Same as mine,
but for different reasons.

You eat for nostalgia.
I eat for poetry.
And somewhere between pulp and pith,
our mouths mirror each other.
We bite not for hunger,
but for remembering.
Or perhaps—
forgetting.

(in the tongue of a fruit no one names)

If I could feed you one fruit
from a dream I haven't had yet,
it would be translucent, wordless,
tasting like all five of ours
holding hands.
And as juice ran down our chins,
you’d whisper—
“It’s not about the list.”
And I’d nod,
mouth full of memory.