Dolphins like my mommy, but dolphins don’t like my mommy’s friend, Alex. A lot of them swim past in the water. Some of their heads come up, and I can see them because they jump. I saw the sun look like a red light in the sky, and it went away everyday so it could get dark all the time. I saw a hole, and a crab come out. He didn’t walk forwards, but he walked like this. I saw nets hanging off a boat. People screamed cause of birds following the boat. Alex was sitting on the sand, and I wanted him to see, too, the birds behind the boat. I tapped him with my foot. I tapped him on the thigh of his leg, but I wasn’t looking where I was tapping him. He knocked me down because he thought I was trying to hurt him somewhere bad on purpose. I rolled down the sand and got wet in some wet sand. Mommy got mad at him. The ground that’s sand didn’t hurt, and I didn’t cry until my mommy got mad and glared with the face she stares at him with. I went back to the beach house, and I went into Alex and mommy’s room. I found the coloring I did of mommy and Alex and me by the water. I drew us in our ocean clothes, and I drew Alex’s black and red swimsuit on the page. I tore it a whole lot of times and put a piece on the bed. I put a piece on the floor, and I put a piece in the sink at the bathroom. I put a piece back on the dresser again, on top of the metal money he takes out of his pockets at night.
Darrell Kinsey grew up on a small lake in Northeast Georgia. In Athens, he studied literature at the University of Georgia. He has published a book of poems, Torsino, and a novella, Honeywood.