When Boma was a boy, his grandmother planted a mango tree at the center of their compound. “This tree will measure our days,” she told him, tying a small brass clock to its trunk. Boma never understood what she meant.

He grew up climbing that tree, picking its sweet fruit while his grandmother watched from the veranda, her laughter like music in the humid air. But as the years passed and city life called, Boma stopped visiting. He missed birthdays, harvest festivals, even her quiet stories at dusk.

Work consumed him. Promotions, deadlines, endless traffic—there was always tomorrow for family, always another visit “soon.” He barely noticed when her letters slowed, then ceased.

One harmattan morning, a cousin’s call finally pierced his schedule: Grandmother had passed.

Boma returned to the village to find the mango tree enormous, its branches heavy with fruit. At its base lay the brass clock, still ticking softly though no one had wound it in decades. The hands pointed to the exact time of her death.

He pressed his forehead to the trunk, tears cutting through the dust on his cheeks. For the first time he heard the rhythm hidden beneath the ticking: a quiet reminder that love, like time, does not pause for anyone.

The wind shifted. A single ripe mango dropped beside him with a soft thud, as if offering both forgiveness and farewell.