Talia Flores 

sampling of skin

we were two nymphs
running / with roots for
legs / i remember her
smile as an orange slice /
remember her kissing uneven
ridges with plumped, / lotus-bun
lips / remember the rain
afterward, drops falling like
a symphony / and a
mess, the thump-thump of
water matching our breaths /
and beats of blood /
our lungs expanding and
deflating in time, / bodies
rolling downward with the
sloped earth, / minds baby-blue
skies, / her hand sticking
to the crests of my
fingerprints like stitches /
like she was a
pirouette / and i was
silk

My favorite souvenir is a pumice statue of a kneeling woman from Mexico; it once belonged to my Grandma. Pumice - a rock that floats - has always fascinated me. Looking at the statue, I feel dared to attempt the impossible.
 

Talia Flores is a senior at Eden Prairie High School. She has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and the Texas Book Festival Fiction Contest. Her work appears or is forthcoming in National Poetry Quarterly, Words Dance, Glass Kite Anthology, and more. She is the founder of her previous high school’s first literary journal, Combustion.Lit, and she works as a reader for Polyphony H.S. and as an editorial intern for The Blueshift Journal.