The art of nudity

The first time I saw a naked woman
It was on the internet at the age of 12
And I was…. Confused
I’d heard so much about the female form about how beautiful it was ,

how life changing your first glimpse was supposed to be,

How you were supposed to feel A burning wave of passion,

About how you would feel something more than clinical detachment,

But being 12 years old I put it out of my head. Who cares,

Only 5 years down the line when I first saw actual nakedness did i recognise the significance of nudity,

The way that a thigh is just any thigh until it’s a smooth plane over which my hands want to lose themselves,

A shoulder is only a shoulder until your lips want to brand a pattern onto it,

But the thing about nudity is it doesn’t just go one way ,

seeing her without her layers, left me just as exposed as it left her,

the first time I heard her say the words I love you

I for a second felt naked ,

unclothed and lost because I didn’t have anything to say in return,

the most terrifying thing about nudity is that it’s perfectly fine as long as it’s a stranger

As long as a shoulder is just a shoulder and a thigh is just a thigh

But when her skin is no longer her skin but a map etched with a story as old as time itself,

It’s no longer about just seeing a naked woman,
It’s about the act of worship ,
I felt like a man dragged in front of the sacrificial altar gazing up at the idol stretched out over the narthax ,

And wondering whether it was even supposed to feel like this,

About where this had been all their life,

Being naked wasn’t just about taking off her clothes and mine,

It was so much more,

I felt like I was peeling of the skin from my bones and standing there more naked then the day I was born,

I felt unclothed even though I was under 3 layers and I felt

so exposed …..

The first time she told me she loved me,

She closed my eyes whispered it in my ear ,

It felt like the screaming chorus to a song we’d been singing for years before we met ,

The stories the secret, the lost moments all felt a thousand times more resonant,

The first time I saw a beautiful women naked,

I didn’t even have my eyes open.

-RLC