• She Is Fire
• she is fire 
• not the containable kind 
• clinging to a broken wick 
• strategically centered 
• presented by a glass jar’s aesthetics 
• flame onset only by human hands 

• no 

• she is fire 
• wild, self-starting 
• dancing over grasslands 
• answering to no one 
• burning unapologetically 

• and when you try to forget her
• before you sleep every night 
• your eyelashes will singe 
• ash to your cheekbones 
• cold stretching endless in your sheets

• everywhere you go
• her inferno footprints
• already there

• — your footprints

• If I Dig
• if I dig 
• far enough into myself

• hollow out the grottos
• my skin smothers

• turn self-hate 
• into cemeteries
• use my bones
• as headstones 

• the flowers I set 
• on my internal graves 
• will grow roots 
• into my flesh

• sprout stargazer lilies 
• from every single freckle 
• to wrap around 
• souls who don’t stay

• I will be so much a 
• temple for myself 

• I will

• — never know homesick again

• There Were Days
• There were days 
• whose hours I wanted to tie to my heaviest thoughts 
• watch them sink, really sink 
• until even the ocean floor 
• tried to spit them up
• whose minutes I wanted to crumble into sand 
• watch them fall 
• from the top of the moon to the bottom
• until she opened up 
• let the ocean eat them 
• whose seconds I wanted to inflate with my breath 
• watch them float
• until even the stars 
• became mobile

• there were days I broke mirrors
• polluted my sky with pen ink 
• suffocated clocks with my pillow cases 
• — or tried to 
• these days now my brother, my sister 
• these days became my hands and my feet 
• knew them like my eyes knew lined paper.
• but the mornings, the sun 
• always returned 
• so did I

• — so will you

Alauna Ricketson’s poetry and non-fiction has appeared in literary magazines at San Diego, Miramar, and Mesa colleges (Mesa is where she took her favorite poetry class: Climate Change Poetry, led by professor Scott Starbuck.) She lives in San Diego with her basset hound and everyone in her life calls her “Rocket.” She carries that fire with her, believing everyone has a story that deserves to be heard – including Earth.