But I am Naked Now

I’m naked.  Outside with the finicky sunshine, crickets, a plane rumbling somewhere near.  I like the free air and the heat on all of me.  The bees move as if they are being breathed - in and out, sliding along some invisible fabric.  

I am self conscious writing to you.  When you look at me, it goes deep.  An exquisite panic arises.  I build castle walls to keep you out and dig secret tunnels to sneak you in.  

You see me, not just the parts I show, not just the parts I consciously hide, but a whole of me that I cannot perceive.

A squirrel sits preening in a crook of the tupelo that leans over the pond.  Another scampers through mulch collecting acorns, its movements punctuated with any sound that might be cause for alarm.  I smell the work of a chainsaw - warm, astringent.  I try to relax into the familiarity of this world, but the pressure of you coursing through me, thickening my blood, is a new sensation.  I don’t know myself as I used to.

I feel compelled to ask if its reciprocal.  It’s a defense, an attempt to soothe myself with the idea that there is camaraderie in the internal quake.

The sun is sweet.  When it comes out, it lays on me.  I can see I am not the only thing feeling its heat.  But the squirrels and hummingbirds take shade, so it is just me and the rocks and the wood, fixed in radiance.  It feels good it because it comes from outside.

I want to travel with you like dragonflies, bent, twisted into each other, making knotted islands of our delicate bodies atop the murky water we know so well.

I want to write succinctly, matter-of-factly, less poetry, more substance.  I want clean and elegant simplicity.  But I am naked now and I can’t disguise these heavy prose - the exposure of a throbbing beauty, roots grasping stones, clinging to the Earth, screaming in anguish and delight at having been discovered.