Nakedness

when i was little i thought love meant kindness and sharing. i thought it meant smiles and sweet words. when i got a little older i thought love meant kindness and sweet words and being naked. when i got even older i confused being naked with love. not the kind of naked where somebody wears their heart on their sleeve or lets you see their soul as though they’ve turned it inside out for you. i’ve seen small lies and big lies and what lies beneath the people you trust most. i’ve seen trust broken and trust bent and trust never initially set. i’ve seen kindness and sharing and malice and possession but i have never seen this kind of naked. i have seen nakedness with strangers during 3am calls and loneliness. i’ve seen loneliness turn into leather seats gripping my calves in a taxi on the way home from the club crawling into somebody else’s bed. i’ve seen mistrust placed in me by the same naked that lies within those sheets. i had only ever seen the naked that lies in bed next to me, not in somebodies soul. i had never known nakedness could run deeper than an evening. i know now nakedness is in the way she reads my body, not what she does to it in the early hours. i know nakedness is how she looks me in my eyes, not how somebody admires them under cigarette light as ash falls onto bed sheets. nakedness runs deeper than my skin, and she taught me that. nakedness is how she shows me herself, the darkness and the light and everything in between, it’s in the way we speak, the way we cry, the way we laugh, and all of those things happen with my clothes on.