Gwendolyn leaves the bed where Troy is lightly snoring and looks out at the vast sleeping city from 32 floors up. She imagines that each light is a front porch lamp, left on for someone who is coming home. She hasn’t had a front porch in years. A garden. A bike. She used to fall asleep on the couch after Brian died. Fell asleep easily, as if trying to follow him. He was always a pacer on their walks through the park, she more flaneur. Troy, her young Pilates instructor, sleeps anytime anywhere. Sometimes he drifts off while making love. Wakes with a smile. Gwendolyn opens the front door of her apartment and looks down the well-lit hall, right, then left. No one’s coming. Not Brian. Not Millie, the weekend shepherd next door who bartends at night. Not sleep. She grabs her felting needle and Millie’s wool from the co-op and sits on the couch by the lamp, poking the needle through the wool, connecting fibers, working the ghostly shapes until a sheep appears, then another and another and another ... a small herd gathers on her coffee table, looking up at her. She wonders what she’ll feed them—maybe parsley, maybe mint ... and she wakes with a smile.

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.