I am jealous
Of the skin
Stretched over your bones

I like to blame you
For who I have become

I keep pacing the shoreline
Waiting for pieces of me
To wash up with debris

Pieces that would still glow
Even though you
Put the embers in my bones

780 tallies
For every time
I feel ship wrecked without you

They say another man's trash
Is someone else's treasure
But you are the only one
Who ever made me feel like a prize

You’re all the same
Assembly line humans
Intentions hidden on
Perfectly designed frames

Street light eyes
To guide me home
Are lit by the fire
Stolen from my soul

All holding smiles
Glinting until they blind
You’re all the same*
And you cannot be trusted

At first glance
You compliment me
Orange hues igniting
My brown sugar frame

I have been scratching tallies
Counting down
The days
Until autumns grace

You embalm me
Forever preserved
Begging to forget
To shed your memories

Brown shriveled leaves
Cracking swiftly beneath my heals
Dust which once glowed green
Filled with promises to deceive

My twisted beautiful frame
Will remain
Your words  lost
In the crackle of crisp air

Autumns arrival
Will bring your ruin
But I
Will be born anew

I could
Dissolve into you
Fizzle away
Into your brilliance
Dissipating
Just a shadow cast
Across broad shoulder blades

You have replaced my bones
Sunshine now slips
Through my veins
Fragments of hope
Sliding through window panes
Igniting

With you
Something inside me collides
Pieces shift
Back into their places
A dead bolt lock
Keeping me safe

Within  you
I've found the missing pieces of myself

Skeleton in my closet
How I wish you were dead
Your memories gather
Dust in my head

Skeleton in my closet
I wish you were a ghost
To justify your haunting
How you press fear into my bones

Skeleton in my closet
Your insides are empty
Why must you pretend to be alive?

But
I cannot love you
When I do not love myself

It's all too evident
I'm in the wrong place
Despite the lack of caution signs
Kissing the door frame

Cookie cutter freaks
I am not fitting the mold
Tell me, what the ****
I've gotten into this time?

I will not ruin my poetry
With your ******* writing prompts
Pre-designed to drain creativity
Leeches to the heart

Here is a giant *******
Creative writing club
**I won't be back again

How I long to be
The sweater gripping your skin
A complimentary ocean blue
Harmonizing your swimming eyes

Hugging tightly to
Your sleepy bones
Sinking you when you leave shore

How I long to be your jeans
Clinging softly to you
Melding to your wet skin

A blue cotton night sky
Enveloping you
In the heat
Of my embrace

We are covered by the dark
Blanketed by the milky way
Moonlight kisses your skin
I wish it were my lips

Between us are a row of strings
Begging to be plucked
We'd make a symphony
Soothe the city to sleep
Instead they draw you closer to me

Drawn to you
Stars to the midnight sky
A musician to a new instrument
Can't help but wonder
*What does it take to make you sing?

When you leave
I feel I've set
My best pieces to sea
On a ship designed to be swallowed
By the swell of my heart

But my love is elastic
Worlds largest rubber band
Stretching an entire states width
Pulled through your telephone
It lingers in my voice

There's nothing more magical
Than the vibration of your vocal chords
Through the distance
I dream of my head against your throat
To feel that vibration through my soul

When his fingers trace my skin
It will be a foreign invasion
Of the territory you made
A traitor
Waltzing on enemy lines

I'll look for you
In the contours of a strangers smiles
Or behind his fingertips
Waiting for just a glimpse
Of your light
To seep from someone else's skin

For pieces of you to surface
Rise like blood
A purple splotched
I love you
Signed with
I'm yours

I'll hold my breath forever
*but you won't ever come

Extension Cords
By Grace Espinoza

Extension cords
Kiss our spines—
Once outlined and defined
By cotton soft lips—
Dangling, extended, from slender necks

Familiar buzz of tandem heartbeats
Replaced by rumbling monitors
Deafened by the constant hum
Of clicking fingertips

I cannot reach through glass
To trace that smile
Conform it to the memory
Of greedy palms

Cannot wrap my arms
Around you
To set your worries to sail

Connected
Strings of words said
But never meant
Blinded by the bright glow
Monitors casting shadows
On what could have been

Searched for razor sharp teeth
To tear at my benevolent heart
But my monster
Never hid under my bed
Or rested in my head
His disguise was a smile
Stitched
To perfection

Searched for the man in a mask
To raid me
But he never stole anything tangible
Or that could be replaced
His camaflouge skin was
Stretched over
Empty bones

I searched for signs
Yellow like the sun
Caution
But my assailant
Looks just like
*You and I

Faltering

Whispers fill ears
Like the wind blowing  crisp leaves
Glares passed like greetings
Stabbed into backs
Slipped between ribs

Pull up shields
Wear them like cloaks
Walk tall
Hide the stumbling

Rise to greet the day
But before night and day intermingle
You're cut down again

Sew on smiles
To match button eyes
This routine
A dance that never ends

Attached it is thrown
Tossed aside
That last backwards glance
Dropping
Sinking
Sand through open fingertips
Projected
Splashed wickedly across my face
Painted within my irises

It is said
Grappling is synonymous
With coping

You are everywhere
Stitched into my very fabric
Linens I can press my face into
Lingering with the fragrance
Of your honeysuckle skin

Not haunted
But guided swiftly
My beacon in the dark
You are everywhere

Every creaking floor board
Sighs your name
Softly onto my neck
Can still feel your breath

My head a sky overflowing
Gun metal clouds
Swelling
And even when it hasn't rained
All I see is grey

Words that drip
From a poison tongue
Like a leaky faucet

These choices anchors
Who we were sinking
Never to surface again

Everything we know
Disintegrating fast
We've left nothing memorable behind

Dug our own graves
With the shovels we made
Too filled with pride
To ever apologize
Buried ourselves alive

Our identities faded
Like ghosts
Dissolving into air

The space on the nape of your neck
Was pre-designed for my head

I could evaporate into it
Play hide and seek
Between your collar bones

Peek from behind your lips
Tie your tongue with my fingertips

I want to be swallowed
Darkness cast away by your glow
Want to become
The spark in your bones

You're translucent
The panic in your bones
Glows
Lights my way home

Home
Intersects the center
Between your outstretched arms
Thunderstorm heartbeat
I always loved storms

You are a hail storm
On the warmest day in July
I'd drop everything
To watch your chaos
Become creation

Creating a masterpiece
Out of my rubble
I'd like to take all your worries
And crush them

Crush them into fairy dust
To make a wish on
Imprinted in my irises
Is the reflection of your light
I will shower you in it
Project the darkness from your life

Your light at the end of the tunnel
Is the train
You're the conductor
As I'm standing in the way

The teeth I had once
Ached to force from their hiding place
Transform

A dim smile
Dancing across the room
Devouring me

Hands I had looked to
Hold together
Push down my frame
Warp everything I'd known
Out of place

I could if I wanted to, you know?
Hisses behind every
Corner I can't quite see past

Everything once outlined
Perfectly defined
Lost in the folds

In the fragments
Of who I was
Before you

Hope liquifies
Spills out my glowing eyes
Your skin whispers
It's finally alright
Hearts racing in tandem
I can feel my pain
Vanquished by the light
You bask me
In the most beautiful glow

My love for you used to shine
Radiate from my porcelain skin
Street lights littering a dark road
Washing you in my light
But these feelings have evaporated
Dissipated into thin air

Promises exchanged
Through lying lips
Whispering words that tickle our ears
We had paradise trapped
Between our clenched fists
Let it slip through the cracks

Can't go back to
Where faces held so much more
Than just memories
I don't remember how to feel
Like I once did

I seek forgiveness
Here on my knees
Where my shattered promises
Cut into my tender skin

I find pieces of you
Wedged in the strangest places
Tucked loosely behind my ear
A hair that kissed the nape of my neck which
Synchronized with your searching jaws

You linger
Tugging like gravity
On the edges of my lips

Once so defined
Now a fading chalk outline
Sketched   by your tricky nimble fingers
Molded by hands
I thought I knew
But this shape is unfamiliar

Elastic skin that won’t shape over bones
Tracing down my skin
Your fingerprints are brand marks now

-  GNE

I wish your memories were threads
Sewn through my skin
Your beautiful stitching
A make shift fix

But your memories are splinters
A dull ache
Hiding in the depths of my head

Splinters, you are a foreign object
My body in protest
You linger a reminder
Just behind my skin
*You're always there

Breath dancing across my skin
Raindrops trickling down window panes
Lips nipping bared flesh

Offered up
My sacrifice
Tender splotches of you
Signatures across skin

Your voice a whisper,
just a hanging evening fog,
draping its arms around me.

I am stained carved oak-wood
Shaved by your skilled hands
I'm shaped anew

Become lost in the folds of now
I am unrecognizable
An object traced by my hands
Forever holding sharp edges

Took youth
Set it to sail
On sinking ships

Our frantic
Greedy hands
Never close enough
But grasping still

Had our nimble fingers outstretched
Adulthood a locked door
Keys round our necks

Unlocked the door
To become
Swallowed
Devoured whole
Captured by the dark

“I could if I wanted, you know?”
I pirouetted
Full tilt
The room on its axis
Spinning quickly

Wound up
Unwound top
Rhythmically synchronized
With my clenched gut

Transfixed as
You—
Who had traced the edges
Of me
Mapped me
Committed to memory –
Morphed quickly
Became unrecognizable

Your identity
Faded
An old photograph
Outlined and defined
You frame everything I am

Who once was a beacon
Is now a shadow cast
The coldest glance
A knife kissing
Cozying against my skin

Alive, you still haunt me
A shamble of what I thought
A ghost of a man
I’m
Creased
From your tricky hands

NO*
Ringing gunshot
Swimming through your ears
Tell me, please,
That’s why you couldn’t hear
I am just a trail of smoke
Dissipating now

An ember
When I once was a blaze
Smothered by  uninvited embrace
I am fragmented
But they say
Every phoenix
Rises from ash

Shook out your memories
Pennies from a piggy bank
Tucked in between couch cushions
From your first home

Old age has kissed your skin
Basked you in the gleam
Of the unknown

But tucked in your creases
Lie memories
To lead you home

Who you were
Is not unrecoverable
Forever preserved
In our hearts

Roughly biting down
Iron tongue
Lungs constricted
Refusing to let
A breath escape
My pleas, silenced
There's no one to save me

Held down
Marking me up
Outlining territories
Red lines on brown sugar skin
Know it's wrong
But I play along
Convinced
Or deceived
By the word love

Eyes welded shut
Praying to fade into
Just a shadow
Splayed flat against the wall

You keep on taking
Though, there is nothing left
I'm certain I should
Stay completely still
As your arms
Steal bars
Close around me

Your educaton is futile
When your spirit
Becomes a star

Years spent carving you
A shape with no edges
To fit their perfect mold
Your true shape
Kept by bones

You're now a part of the earth
From which you were born
One ear pushed to the dirt
And you'll hear your soul

You'll never truly pass
Remaining
Tucked in the smiles you created

Sandpaper Skin
By Grace Espinoza

Sand paper hands
Stitched up by stories
Whispered through pores

Devoured by your rough palms
Swallowing soft flesh
You cling
Looming

Eyes widened
Expanded by curiosities
Familiar fingertips
A naivety so tangible
Pulses behind flesh  

Wrapped in
Anchored arms
Sends light rushing
Flooding
Into my darkest depths

Molded my soft skin
Hardened it
Thickened shell

Sandpaper hands
Stitched up by stories
Weaved into my brain

Connected through corruption
Entangled
Snared in the web of The Unknown
Uncertainty's hands
Tightening on our throats

We become shadows
Pigmentation drained
The hope to overcome
Trickling down the gutter

Forever swimming
The raging seas of doubt
Anchored
By memories
We beg to forget

We're both drowning
Swelling tides
Of what could have been
Please, take my hand
We can make it to the other side

Fragments of the past
Dancing on broken glass
Sunless Septembers
A  cold ache
For what we once had

Sweet melodies
Poured out of our lips
Warm summer nights
Sealed with a kiss

Glistening eyes
Wholesome and true
Unsaid goodbyes
Linger in our minds

Cool breezes
That blows happiness upon our skin
Green meadows that stretch for miles
Meet our joyous eyes

Worries disappear
Erases the signs
They were ever here

September days
Can't make memories fade

We've still got the pieces
Of everything we made

Our love is the burning august sun
Bowing to September nights
Setting

Everyone's captivated
Affection fizzling out
Tinges of orange
Our molten feelings
Cooling now

We illuminate them
Kissing their edges
With yellow candle light
A faded reminder
Of our radiance

Our love
Nothing but a setting sun
Destined to rise again

The smile so bright
I felt illuminated
Has chewed me up
Forgetten to spit me out

Trapped, held in the grooves
Of your sharpened smile
Converted cracks and crevices
Into the maps of my mind

I am scraps
Shreds with missing pieces
Caught between crimson gums
Hope your next victim
Will taste me on your tongue

Words that make a snarl
As they launch from your throat
Fireball letters
Construed into sentences
That singe my edges

You seek solace in my open arms
Which close fast
Melded tightly from the past

Apologies slip
Sand through finger tips
But I see beyond it

Bound for the cycle
To turn into a circle
*I know you'll never change

Beneath the floorboards
Is the continuous race of a lover's heart
Steady, an ocean forever crashing against the shore
Swimming with the familiar scent
Of your midnight skin

The constant warmth
Of your searching lips
A tidal wave of memories
Churning under our foundation
Rocking me to the core

My bones are rattling china
On a train racing to you
Tracks clinging to the edge
Like Your hands melded to my hips

My eyelids tattooed
With your name
Sewn to me
A second skin
Wonder if the me before you
Will ever surface again

Symphonies
By Grace Espinoza

Out turned pockets
Contents spilled across
Stained table tops

Love notes with frayed edges
Worn by fingertips
Promises unkept

My head an ocean
Crashing with words
You never truly meant

Swayed by your melodies
And callused fingers
Playing me for your symphonies

Glued back together
Porcelain doll
Cracks down the frame
Time heals all
But I am forever changed

We are the beginning
Of the end
The hope pulsing
Behind brown sugar skin


Dissipating
Fading with the setting sun
Darkness settles
Cloaks thrown over bare shoulders
Goose flesh dancing
Waltzing across pale skin

Raw
Tender to the touch
A freshness so ripe
It drips with youth
Raindrops across ***** window panes

Born anew
Flooded with the glow of promise
Balanced nimbly on our pinkies fingertips
We will surface again

You are bonfire smoke
Clinging to my favorite clothes
Washed my hair 30 times
Felt your hair in my fingers
Every single time

And when I look in the mirror
I wear your smile
This glow in my eyes
Is reflecting off your skin

If I pricked my finger
It'd be your blood
You're coarsing rapidly
Through my veins
*I need a transfusion to escape

Education, predesigned to open doors,
Becomes a leech on the skull
Draining creativity
Pigmentation leaks from pores

This life becomes a cycle of
Doing as you're told
Never succeeding
Unless you conform

Repetition wears
Warping bones
Bending frames
Reconstructed to their molds

Assembly line humans
"The minds of the future"
Education
Becomes a trap door

Split down the middle
Splintered tendons
Jagged bones
Who I am
And who I was
Are playing tug-a-war

Heavy sighs
Slipping from burning bodies
Replacing words
Too tangled
On panting tongues

Fingers tracing
Silky skin
Mingling with heart beats
That slam like back doors

Tangible heat
Seeps between
Ensnared fingers

You & I
We are drawn tight
Magnetic

You & I
Are a lock finally slid into place
United and safe

I just need a suitcase
Big enough
To pack you in

His moonlight skin
My guide in the dark
Eyes a galaxy
But I'm searching for his heart

He plucked the sun from the sky
Swapped it for my soul
Though you can't have both day and night

We compliment each other
*But can never complete each other