'Close to Home' by Sravanthi Challapalli

I would buy it one day after I grew up, surely. When we moved, I bid each tree goodbye with folded hands. There was the mango, the gooseberry, the dappled guava, and more. I caressed the walls decorated with gray and pink cement orbs. Older, I bought a flat with gray walls and little green. The mango tree outside my window grew up after several years. The help, ours and the neighbours’, assault it for the fruit. Us residents ignore it, we can’t be bothered by such trifles. My old home is two streets away, demolished and built anew. It now has high walls and a forest of sprawling trees. It’s the perfect shroud to protect it from a stranger’s view.