Flash Fiction 1st Place: Inventory of Things My Mother Never Taught Me to Measure by Timothy Collyer
- Okra by the smell at the cut end—hers, now mine. If it snaps sharp and breathes green, keep it. If there’s a faint penny note, leave it for someone braver.
- Roti dough by sound. Knead until the lump stops thudding and starts to clap, a soft hand against the worktop. The bowl goes quiet first; the counter follows.
- Salt by the backs of the knuckles. Two pinches for potatoes, one for rice. She’d dust her hands on her apron like that settled it.
- Cardamom by patience. Split pods with a thumbnail while the kettle thinks about boiling. Never taste the chai—listen. When the bubbles gather like coins and hold their nerve, pour.
- Cumin by memory. Dry-roast until the kitchen smells like the first minute after rain on hot pavement. Crush with the heel of a glass, because the mortar is right there somewhere, and dinner cannot wait.
- Heat by the width of a shadow. If your hand passes over the pan and the edge tightens, add onions. If they hiss as if told off, turn it down.
- Rice by the first crease of an index finger; water by what covers it. Rinse until the bowl stops clouding and the grains give up their story.
- Mangoes by wrist-weight. Heavier than they look—that’s the point. Press near the stem; if it answers, it’s ready.
- Grief by an untranslated word. The one older aunties use, measured only by the careful silence that follows.
- Distance by the scratch of an overseas line, and now by WhatsApp’s tiny delay before a voice returns from another night.
- Love by the pressure of plaits: not tight enough to sting, tight enough to last through PE. Three strands, three rules.
- Money by neat envelopes. Notes facing forward, elastic band around the bundle. “Banks like tidy people,” she’d say, and somehow they did.
- Worry by inventory. Door twice, hob once, iron anyway. Phone your brother. Again. Pack a jumper for the person who will say they’re fine.
- Pride by silence when the news mentions a place we used to share with other names. She would dry a plate until it squeaked and ask if I’d eaten.
- Mercy—not counted. Poured like tea, offered again if you refused the first time.
- Today, coriander by fistfuls, yoghurt by guess, gram flour by nerve. Trays from Tesco, order-of-service stacked near the sugar, a framed photo fogging at the edges. The urn in the church hall hisses. I whisk semolina for halwa, counting seconds against the scrape of the spoon, listening for the moment it lets go of the pan, until it pulls itself together—the way your hand steadied mine at the bowl, your dough clapped when ready, the way I’m trying to.
