I watch an ant climb in through my ear and up the branches of my mind, tangle of memory, morass of emotion, quicksand of regret, then up ego’s steep climb, giving wide berth to the anger pond. I watch as the ant hoists a realization twice its weight and greets another with a bow, that ant staggering under a cargo of thoughts and overloaded worries, trailed by another carting enormous questions, followed by two ants dressed as monks in tiny robes and microscopic Crocs on all six tiny feet, or maybe tiny Birkenstocks with grey socks. I squint as if that will help; see a nimble ant quick but in no hurry, greeting and bowing, weightless without discernible purpose or destination. Faint recognition conjures like a drawing of a flower in chalk on the sidewalk after a light rain—the ant of wonder, whose very presence is the essence of matter itself. One by one, on a train of ants words arrive like fallen leaves from a branch whose colors and shapes fill the space on the page, space in my heart, space in my mind. And the shadow question of why I still write is carried away, the way ants will carry off their dead, while more ants arrive, agile and curious, traveling up and down the branches of my mind, their very function the very answer that is never written down, shadow words felt and known, shadow writing older than alphabets, more enduring than paper, than wood, than stone.

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.