不說，就沒有人會知道
我們有時會相信，有些事情不必說出口，也不想打開自己，於是就甚麼都不說。
走過田間，看見芒果薑那一叢寬闊翠綠的薑科葉片，你大概甚麼都聞不到。
因為它那陣教人驚艷的芒果香氣，並不在葉子上，而是全被安靜地收在泥面下那一截根莖裡。
根莖的外皮是淺黃褐色，與同屬的薑黃看上去差不多。切開，裡面卻幾乎是白的，只有芯留著一點淡黃。氣味，也是這一刀之後才出來的。
它的氣味沒有熟透芒果那種甜膩。反倒像是一片酸芒果乾湊近鼻子時，那種曬過、收乾之後剩下來的酸，後面再跟著青芒果的生澀，乾淨而俐落。孟加拉語叫它 amaada，意思是「芒果般的味道」——這個名字，是有人把它掘出來、切開過之後，才給得出的。
有些東西，確實是要打開才能體會得到的。
如同芒果薑的香氣一樣，它一直在那一截根莖裡，只是外面那一層把全部都擋住了。
如果你近日心裡有一些事一直沒有說出口，不妨記起芒果薑的故事。
不說，就沒有人會知道。
以香為語，安在當下。
Say it, or no one knows.
We half believe that some things need not be spoken, that we would rather not open ourselves, and so nothing is said.
Walk past a field, look at the mango ginger with its clump of broad green ginger-family leaves, and you will probably smell nothing at all.
Because that striking mango scent of its is not in the leaves. All of it is kept quietly in a single length of rhizome below the soil.
The skin of the rhizome is a pale buff, much like the turmeric of its own genus. Cut it, and the inside is almost white, with only a faint yellow left at the core. The scent, too, comes only after that cut.
There is none of the cloying sweetness of a ripe mango about it. It is closer to a slice of sour dried mango held up to the nose: the sourness left behind by sun and drying, with the green astringency of an unripe mango following after, clean and brisk. In Bengali it is called amaada, meaning mango-flavoured — a name that could only be given once someone had dug it up and cut it open.
Some things really have to be opened before they can be known.
So it is with the scent of mango ginger. It has been in that length of rhizome all along, with only the outer layer holding the whole of it back.
If something has been sitting unsaid in you these past days, you might pause a while in the scent.
Say nothing, and no one will know.
𝘽𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩, 𝙩𝙝𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙨𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙩.