Mangoes

These mangoes have been in the freezer
so long they almost taste like something
else, like canned peaches, and they are just
as slippery between my fingers.
Even as they thawed, the plastic bag
filled with the water in them as it
leaked out of the fruit, beginning to
bubble. These are not summer mangoes
smooth as silk on the tongue and bright with
a taste between tooth and tender, edged
with pine leaves. These are not green mangoes
tough and tart, or even mangoes left
too long to ripen and now headed
past sweetness to a brown rot oozing
crystals of pitch sticky as amber.
These are mangoes of desperation,
mangoes that were given promises
of eternal youth, but promises
were misleading at best, if not lies.
These are mangoes left to marinate
in the faint wishes of another
kind of life, wishes that sucked the life
right out of everything around them.
Still, this will have to be good enough
because these are the mangoes I have
here and now, and they are my dessert.