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She was selling raw mangoes

sitting quietly under a tree

as if nothing had happened

but everything had

The earthquake had taken

walls, roof, certainty,

left her with open sky

and the quiet hunger of survival.

I do not like raw mangoes.

Their sourness never belonged to me.

But her smile

not yet fully there,

not yet ripened

waited somewhere between hope and habit.

So I bought them.

Not for their taste,

but for that fleeting moment

when her face softened,

when something inside her

chose to bloom again.

It has been a long time.

Fieldwork has turned into memory,

and memory into a photograph

that still breathes.

And every time I look

I do not see mangoes,

or ruins,

or loss.

I see a smile

ripening in the middle of dust,

and I remember

once,

I was able

to be the reason.