Mango Tree – Short Story

I worked on this piece in a Creative Writing course a few semester’s ago and I have decided to go ahead and let it out into the world. 

For your reading pleasure. . .

For 19 of her 22 years of life, her only constant was the shade of a mango tree on the side of her abuela’s  home in South Florida.  In a place where residential developments were plastering over seas of green grass and gravel roads were becoming four lane highways, the shade from that tree provided her with more than relief from a sun that poured rays of blinding light and suffocating heat.

The shade from the mango tree was her everything.  She would lie on the plush green bed of grass and stare up at the long leaves that masked the sun and the mangoes that would fall to the ground when they were oto ripe to han on to the tree any longer and escape.