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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Where Icarus Went” Down in the Dirt v216 (2/24) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology The Limits of Imagination the Down in the Dirt January - April 2024 issues collection book		get the 422 page January - April 2024 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

A Dolphin’s Daughter

L. Quattrochi

On a summer camp’s day the soft girls sang
about kissing boys and bubblegum
and I couldn’t make my short legs go over the rope just right,

felt myself tripping through their arrows of sky,
those girls and their uncrooked ponytails
upon whom the pennies and acorns and birds never smiled
and their mothers were as far away as mine
like a hundred sand-swollen tide shells

and though the acrid world takes me from behind
my pen sinks—from the living water I drink
and let the disappointment refill me

and all that shatters is not the rainbow or childhood
or me here quivering, in the net of all I hope to never become

when the pain of a flower pulled up will remind you
that the earth hurts us by giving us roots and lonely petals.

And when you’ve found her sinking, swimming, withering,
leave the table—and in a crisp crackle of agony a dolphin’s daughter
is gone, leaving us to take care of each other somehow.

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