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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:

Fears of a Setting Sun

McKenna Ashlyn

Marigolds behind the clothesline. A lover’s sweater pinned
to dry. Powdered sunshine pigment, poignant, sinking the sky.

The woman’s face worn—lost citrus, dewy morning garden. Wild
and precious. She’s a bleeding heart, all ribbon and tulle.

Farmhouse of puckered flowers—yet empty, echoing.
Hands—ever-fragile, still. Even still. Her thorny monologue:

I’m a conglomerate—settled-sediment cementing.
I worry I am too much made of guilt—

Excavate and what is left? Happenings
of a younger girl. Haunted as by catch

is a way of killing too. I watch the algae blooms. Ballerina
twirls green, taking back what’s hers. Chaos

unpeeling. The Great Dying—there’s always been tragedy
here. This living, this soil. Fossils transplanted here. Another world.

In the unruly forest, I am flattened. Seen soft-hearted under the same
sun. Entropy. Just another nothing. Among lace-threaded

tree branches, gentle unknowings. Lilac negotiation
of survival. Sun—Get on your knees.

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