The Mango That Was Not for Me (First Love)

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
It was July, I think. I was fourteen.
The sun-baked concrete steps of the public library were hot enough to cook on.
I was pretending to read a book I didn't understand.
Then you sat down, not too close.
Daniel.
You pulled it from your backpack, a heavy, blushing thing.
A perfect mango.

[Chorus]
The skin was a sunset, all red and gold and green.
You peeled it back with your thumbnail.
And the smell of it... was like a different country, suddenly right there.
I watched the juice run in a line down your chin.
It was the sweetest, most impossible thing I had ever seen.
The mango that was not for me.

[Verse 2]
The cicadas were a wall of sound that afternoon.
My copy of some sci-fi novel was upside down in my lap.
I was trying to look like I belonged to myself.
But every circuit in my brain was watching you.
Watching you tear that golden fruit apart with your teeth.
A whole dissertation on devotion, happening right there on the library steps.
A subject of one.

[Chorus]
The skin was a sunset, all red and gold and green.
You peeled it back with your thumbnail.
And the smell of it... was a promise, made to someone else.
I watched the juice run in a line down your chin.
It was the sweetest, most impossible thing I had ever seen.
The mango that was not for me.

[Bridge]
A little foolishness, a lot of curiosity.
That's all it was.
You were just a boy with sticky hands.
Probably thinking about baseball, or dinner, or nothing at all.
But for one afternoon, you were the architect of the world.
And I was learning the physics of want.

[Outro]
I never even asked for a piece.
I knew my lines.
Some things are just for watching.
The heat... the hunger.