Modesty

Stand!  Naked, legs apart, eyes closed.  

I stand, and in the silence of my other senses, my skin begins to shimmer--like scales, like leaves on a breathing tree--and every inch of me feels the air, finds the sounds of water, of wind, of distant laughter, of my own breathing.  When I take my body, when my body takes me--to a river, to an ocean, to a jade pool that boils with the honey of the sun under a waterfall coming from the sky--when I and my body to these places go and I (in anxious grace or by bumbling tumble) plunge into that world, the farsical air surrounds me, lifts me and pulls me down...water.  

Cool, clear, water.  

A sensual robe wrapped around me, clinging to my skin is made of liquid fabric--vaporous as tulle, sensual and soft as silk, or be it ocean then the salty itch of wool.  And it disguises me, denies the sun's penetration, the candid curiosity of other eyes.  That most offensive part of me is hidden or at least disfigured by the plasma, platinum where it reflects the sky, a rust and mustard jigsaw puzzle where that which is under the water projects upon the surface what it would wish to be.

You curate, cautiously, the museum of your days, your life.  You share what you share, sometimes to draw a clear line--point a and point b--that draws attention, that draws the fire, or draws a conclusion that draws the breath away. 

You were less complicated, younger, more handsome; I fetch these memories like water from the well, and I am thirsty even if the complements are either false or comical endured by my middle-aged ears.  This is the imperfection of time, of expectation and experience.  Even one's fondest memories are diluted or devoured by a current myopia, the lens of this lifetime cast back.  

Desperate honesty, the Casio's drubbing is the hum and rhythm of what is and will be a strip tease, essentially.  Sometimes you reveal just for subtle seasoning, sometimes to confuse and confound.  In the hallway, long and echoing, ten pictures are displayed.  They are sequentially less fickle, more brave, the artist obviously idolizes some idea of honesty, some notion that nakedness is (or ought to be) sacred.