It felt like the end of something when my slats gave way. Who wants an Adirondack that you can’t sit in? But Rhonda my recliner friend who’d been stuck in horizontal since at least last spring said not to worry, this is how we, as lawn furniture, live out our lives—after the children grow and are gone, and one parent moves on, and the other stays inside and watches the bird feeder from behind a window in a chair with wheels, and blackberry vines spill over the fence after the rains, and stoic Ben the wooden bench takes on a mossy green that becomes him while neighbor cats prowl and pass through now that the German Shepherd mix succumbed to sleep, and the flamboyance of plastic flamingoes drops one by one. So, Rhonda and I sit quietly in the sun across the yard from Ben, watching spring turn into summer and remembering the days when people sat in us and shared a drink, watching kids play in sprinklers, barbecuing on the grill, bottles and bowls and plates on the redwood picnic table. Somewhere a stiff coiled hose is buried under weeds, weeds that grow up around us as the days grow long and then short, yard memories in the air like dragonflies between us in silence under skies still sunny and blue.

Guy Biederman

is the author of six books, including Translated from the Original: One-Inch Punch Fiction (Nomadic Press, 2022), Nova Nights (Nomadic Press, 2021), Edible Grace (KYSO Flash Press, 2019), and Soundings & Fathoms (Finishing Line Press).

His stories have appeared in many journals such as Bull, Carve, Flash Frontier, Flashback Fiction, great weather for Media, KYSO Flash, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Riddled with Arrows, The Ekphrastic Review, The Disappointed Housewife, and Exposition Review, where he was twice a Flash 405 winner. His work has recently received a Publisher’s Choice Award and an Editor’s Choice Award, and has been nominated for Best of The Net.

A former peace corps volunteer, gardener, and college creative-writing instructor, Guy lives on a houseboat with his wife and salty cat, and walks the planks daily.

Author’s website: https://www.guybiederman.com/

Author’s blog: This Day Afloat: Reflections of Life on the Water

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Quite, a prose poem by Biederman which was the winner of the “Triple-Q” Writing Challenge in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 11, January 2022); to hear him read this piece, see Recordings at his website.

⚡ Edible Grace: An e-Collection of 12 Micro-Prose in KYSO Flash (Issue 12, Summer 2019); click on Next Page at bottom left of each piece to access the next one.

Edible Grace is also available in print and offers bonus content, including six additional micro-prose and five more photographs by the author, plus a pen-and-ink drawing by Tula Biederman.