My grandmother could taste memories.

The first occasion I experienced this was when I was seven years old. We gathered around her kitchen table, with sunlight streaming through the timeworn lace curtains. She scooped up blackberry cobbler with her spoon, brought it to her mouth, and shut her eyes. Her expression changed—not merely with the enjoyment of sugary taste, but with a more profound emotion.

"August 1962," she whispered. "The day your grandfather proposed."

Her eyes remained shut, tears gathering at the corners. "We picked these berries ourselves, down by Miller's Creek. The thorns left scratches on my arms like tiny red rivers." She touched her forearm where no marks remained. "Thomas wore a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His hands were stained purple. When he kissed me, his lips tasted like sunshine and blackberries."

My mother and father exchanged knowing glances across the table. Adult glances that seemed to say: Here she goes again.

But I believed her.

The adults called it dementia. A neurological misfiring that confused taste with memory. I alone recognized it for what it was—magic, plain and simple.

I began bringing her things: honey from the farmers market, sourdough bread from the bakery downtown, apples from the ancient tree behind the house. Each offering unlocked stories—some happy, some heartbreaking, all delivered with the precision of direct witness.

"This honey,“ she said, her voice soft and nostalgic, ”tastes of your father's first bicycle ride during summer. I do remember that I was running right alongside him, my hands gripping the seat as he wobbled unsteadily, the thrill of newfound freedom etched upon his face. A golden, sweet scent filled the air because of blooming flowers, and my back felt the sun's warmth. Bees danced from one blossom to another in our own backyard. Their gentle hum echoed to the rhythm of our days, and it approved every moment that felt just right.

The honey carried notes of clover and also of childhood resilience, she told me—sunshine distilled as insects worked patiently and understood that such sweetness requires its time."

My grandmother's talent changed as I grew. This happened when I was twelve. Alien recollections started to become vivid.

“This bread carries the baker's grief,” she said regarding a slice from within a new French bakery. His mother died last spring. He kneads since she is absent in every loaf.“ She set down her half-eaten piece, suddenly weary. ”Too much weight some memories borrow."

The bread had tasted of yeast and salt to me, but to her, it carried the sour tang of tears held back, the dense weight of words unsaid. I watched her swallow someone else's sorrow and felt both awe and fear.

I asked how she knew this. She smiled, patted my hand, and said, "The same way I know you're worried about your mathematics test tomorrow. Some things you just taste."

The adults took her to specialists. Brain scans. Cognitive tests. They prescribed medications that dulled her eyes but did nothing to stop the memories that flooded her mouth with each bite of food.

"I can taste the hands that harvested the coffee beans," she confided. "I can taste the rain that fell on the wheat. I can taste the sadness of the chicken before slaughter. It's becoming too much."

I was fifteen when she stopped eating anything but plain rice and distilled water. She grew thin. The adults worried, brought in more doctors, and considered feeding tubes.

"I feel like I'm drowning under the weight of everyone else's stories," she confided, with her eyes reflecting a deep confusion. "Every day feels like a wild tide because it pulls me farther from my own narrative, also I don't even know which threads are truly mine anymore."

I approached her the following day with a single, plump blackberry in my palm, one that my father had nurtured for years from the bush near Miller's Creek.

"I picked this just for you," I said, so I extended my hand. "One memory only. Only one berry."

Isolation for months suddenly sharpened her clouded gaze. She lifted the blackberry delicately and examined it as if it were a newly discovered star up in the night sky.

"Are you sure?" she asked, the words holding within a deeper inquiry. Here is what awaits: Are you prepared to access it?

I nodded as determination washed over me.

She gently and decisively moved and then placed the blackberry. The blackberry did land upon her tongue. The change was instantaneous. Color filled her cheeks as her posture straightened, and she seemed to blossom before my eyes, with vitality radiating that she had long forgotten.

"Oh," she breathed then, and just a hint of wonder graced all of her features. "I see it now."

I whispered while leaning closer, "What do you taste?"

With her gaze locking with mine, she then replied, "Not the past. The future."

She grasped my hand tightly, communicating a sense of reassurance to me. Her grip showed a good firmness. I believe that "You have it too—this gift, this gift is yours. It's asleep inside you like a seed beneath soil, simply waiting."

With my interest piqued, I asked, "How can you tell?"

She said with a smile, "Because I can taste it in you." Her fingers tightened around mine as the gift ran through our veins like a hidden river, skipping through generations, only for it to emerge when the time is right. "Your experience won't mirror mine. Presents change, and yours shall develop in a manner that is just for you."

"When?" I asked.

She said, "When you're ready. When you need it, and you need it most now. "

After three days, she then passed away. The adults initially called it natural causes. I knew better. She had made her peace over it and tasted something final and complete in that blackberry.

At the funeral, my father murmured to the new soil when he thought he was alone. "I should have believed her." Those words settled into my heart—the first acknowledging that grandmother's "delusions" perhaps had more truth than the adults could admit.

After that, I went back to my bedroom. My heart was whole, though my stomach was empty. A small jar sat atop my nightstand. My grandma gave this last. Inside was a perfectly preserved single blackberry suspended in golden honey.

The note beneath it read: For when you're ready to remember what hasn't happened yet.

I'm twenty-seven now. The jar remains unopened. Some days, I almost convince myself it was all a childhood fancy—my grandmother simply a lonely old woman with a mind gradually untethered from reality.

But then I notice things: how certain foods leave impressions on my tongue that have nothing to do with their flavor, how I can sense the mood of the farmer who grew my vegetables, the emotional state of the barista who prepared my coffee.

At twenty-one, I accidentally ate a strawberry picked by a man who had just proposed to his girlfriend. For three days afterward, I dreamed of their future together. Six months later, I saw them in a restaurant and knew them instantly, though we had never met.

At twenty-four, I catered a retirement party. I knew, while preparing the salmon, that the guest of honor would die before the year ended. I added dill and lemon, hoping to infuse his last celebration with brightness.

Last year, I stopped eating in restaurants altogether. Too many hands touch the food, too many lives intersect on the plate. I grow what I can in my small garden and buy the rest from vendors I know.

I always keep the jar with me. A talisman. A promise. A question mark.

Yesterday, I received a letter from a neuroscience institute studying "gustatory memory processing disorders." They're looking for participants with family histories of synesthesia. The letter mentioned my grandmother by name, referencing studies done when I was a teenager.

Their timing is uncanny, arriving exactly twelve years after her death, precisely as she predicted on the day she tasted the future in a single blackberry.

The letter contains phrases like “meaningful compensation” and “revolutionary applications in memory manipulation therapy.” Also, I sense something hungrier from between the lines. The research director writes, “harnessing natural synesthetic pathways to create,” so directed memory formation is influencing people's recall.

Some memories weigh far too much for bearing, my grandmother said. Her words are always upon my own mind.

What happens when remembering becomes something done to you rather than by you?

Tonight, I sit at my kitchen table, the jar before me catching the last light of day. The honey has crystallized slightly around the edges, but the blackberry remains perfect, suspended in liquid amber.

I think of my grandmother's words: For when you're ready to remember what hasn't happened yet.

Am I ready? To taste not just my futures but perhaps those of others? To carry the weight of foreknowledge? To remember forward instead of backward?

My fingers trace the lid of the jar, feeling the slight resistance of sugar crystals that have sealed it shut over the years. One twist would break that seal. One taste might change everything.

The decision before me isn't just about curiosity. If I consume this blackberry, will I become like my grandmother—overwhelmed by others' memories until I can barely recognize my own? Or will my version of the gift offer something different?

And what of the institute? If I decline their invitation, will they find someone else with a similar gift—someone who might not understand the responsibility it carries?

The phone rings—the institute, perhaps, following up on their letter. Or someone else entirely. Someone whose connection to me remains in a future I haven't yet tasted.

I let it ring as my decision crystallizes like honey left too long on the shelf. Some memories are meant to be preserved rather than consumed. Some futures are better met with wonder than with foreknowledge.

I move the jar back to its place on my nightstand. It will remain there until the day I need it more than I fear it.

Some gifts aren't meant to be opened. They're meant to remind us of what remains possible, just beyond the edge of knowing.

My grandmother understood this. In that final taste, she saw not just my future but her place in it—how her gift would evolve through me, changing form like memory itself.

Not the details. Not the specific tastes.

But the knowing that underneath it all—underneath time's linear pretense—past, present, and future exist simultaneously, like ingredients in a complex dish that can only be fully appreciated when experienced together.

I close my eyes and feel it stirring: the gift evolving, transforming, becoming something new. Not the same taste, but something similar. Something that will allow me to navigate memory's malleable terrain in ways my grandmother never could.

When I'm ready, the blackberry will be there. When I need it most, I'll break the seal.

Tomorrow, I will write to the institute. Not to volunteer as a subject, but to begin a conversation. To understand what they know, what boundaries must be drawn around the sacred territory of memory?

In my garden, I've planted blackberry cuttings. They won't bear fruit for months, but already I sense the potential in their thorny stems. Each berry that grows will carry a part of my grandmother's gift, a part of my evolving inheritance.

I place my hand over the jar, feeling the cool glass against my palm. Inside, the preserved blackberry pulses with potential, with futures yet to be tasted. Around it, the honey holds everything in perfect suspension—time, memory, possibility—waiting for the moment when knowing becomes more critical than wondering.

Until then, I'll savor the anticipation—which, as my grandmother would say, is often the most exquisite taste of all.