Synkroniciti is happy to welcome back poet, writer and visual artist Rachael Ikins, with a stirring poetic memoir, “I Still Search for Waterfalls.” We all have places left behind, full of memories, where there is no longer any welcome for us. Rachael takes us to a childhood home: the lake, the woods and the A-frame playhouse her Opa built for her, mourning the people that she has lost who made those places real and vibrant. Going back home is risky and sometimes impossible, but our memories connect us still.
Read Rachael’s moving piece in Synkroniciti’s “Flow” issue, Vol 4, No. 2. Purchase the issue or subscribe here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/.
Rachael Ikins followed her pen into the forest as a child. As happened to Gretel in the Grimm Brothers’ tale, a wicked witch forced her to reroute through valleys so dark she doubted the existence of the sun at times. A fabulous wizard held her heart in his hand. They fell in love. He urged her to release poetry from her soul.
She lost everything before she understood her truth: write, write or die. For poetry was the constant through all storms, the beloved she refused to relinquish.
She won some prizes, published in journals and then books. When last seen Ikins was feeding pickled jalapeños to a large dragon perched on the roof of her house—a dragon who bestowed her name upon Ikins’s cat. Sister souls of fire and passion.
Find Rachael @rzikins.author.artist Instagram, @nestl493 on Twitter, at Rachael Ikins Books and Poetry on FaceBook and Ask the Girl Arts.