San Diego’s Alauna Ricketson shares three poems

Her favorite poetry class — Climate Change Poetry — was taken at a local community college

Author

By Alauna Ricketson

Publish Date

May 16, 2019

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

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

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.