Dear reader, I am honoured to share here the winner of the 2025 Grouse Grind Lit Prize for Short Forms, Bird by NmaHassan Muhammad. This touching, tender, bittersweet piece makes the most of its sparingly chosen words, all the way up to that gorgeous ending line (try to avoid reading ahead; it’s worth the wait).
BIRD
A bird comes to rest in Mama’s garden. The wind, cheerfully, blew it from a branch. Its yellow feathers and blue head lie across her flowers. Lukas, a year older at ten, scoops it up. Motionless in his palms, its eyes wink endlessly, life gone from its legs and wings. It’s barely breathing in the chest. Soon it’ll be cold like a door handle. It’s pregnant with a rock – beneath the feathers, a stained hole leaks blood. It wasn’t the wind, but someone’s catapult.
“Is it dead?” I ask, though I know it isn’t.
“Quick, Nana, you slaughter it,” Lukas says.
We’ve seen Papa slaughter rams during Sallah – helped him hold down the chickens, too. He’d close the animal’s eye with his left thumb – respect, he explained – then he’d pronounce Bismillah and cut.
Lukas hands me a razor blade from Papa’s shaving stick. Not that he can’t use it or make the pronouncement, just that I follow Papa and he Mama. He pins the bird, his fingers tight. It doesn’t struggle. One wing lifts, weakly, as I whisper Bismillah. My thumb doesn’t reach its eye, but still my blade bleeds, soaking the soil.
“Our lucky day,” Lukas says.
We kindle a fire and roast the bird. Fat and blood drip into the fire, which spits and hisses. Smoke stings our eyes. The bird turns brown, black, soft – but smaller. We eat it without salt or pepper. Still, it tastes good. But not like chicken, which tastes like all animals together except man.
But now I wonder: was it dead before I cut it? I hope I haven’t eaten haram meat.
Chewing a wing, Lukas says “Don’t worry. It was alive when we slaughtered it.”
He convinces me: we did the bird a favour – eating it.
NmaHassan Muhammad, a prolific and versatile writer and poet, won the 2025 Grouse Grind Lit Prize, the Highly Commended prize in 2025 Welkin Mini Prize, and is a finalist for both the A Public Space Fellowship and the Sundress Light Bill Incubator Microgrant. He has received support from GrubStreet, Authors Publish, Tin House Workshop, SCBWI, The Writing Barn, and Murphy Writing, as well as fellowships from the Oxbelly Writers’ Retreat, Ebedi International Writers Residency, GrubStreet’s Short Story Incubator, and, most recently, Imodoye Writers Residency. Award shortlists or longlists include the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, African Writers Award, Wakini Kuria Prize, The Welkin Prize and two ANA Prizes. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Granta, ANA Review, Kalahari Review, Flash Frontier, Ultramarine Lit Review, Poetry Journal, and several anthologies including Poet’s Choice, Brittle Paper Festive Anthology, and Mukana Press Anthology of African Writing. He resides in Minna, Nigeria.