I found the elegant porcelain flamingo that the housecleaners had broken and took it to the shop downtown. A yellowed business card taped inside the glass front door read: “Precious Artifact Repairs.” A bell jingled when I entered the shop, which smelled of lemons and freshly cut wood. No one was around. On top of an old wooden Coca Cola crate sat a handwritten note: “Please leave your artifact here. Come back next week.” I looked around. The shelves held hanging spider plants, a vase of black-eyed Susans, and miniature clocks with melodious ticks, all on time. I felt like taking off my shoes and bowing though I’m no Buddhist. A calico cat rubbed against my leg. I placed the flamingo, broken at the neck, on the crate and left.

A week later I returned. The door was wide open. A fountain gently gurgled in an atrium out back where a heron and two egrets were feeding in the water. Behind them a flamingo waded in the shallows and shyly gazed my way.

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.