10.09.15
What Is It Like To Be Bare?
What is it like to be bare?
Bare like a child
I was one once
I could crawl through dirt
with my boy cousins
and mutilate bugs
and wrestle in the grass
and argue over whose knees were greener
and see who could push their stomach out the most
and it was lovely
Our feet were bare
and so were our skin and nails
and we were smooth and beautiful
and real
we were fresh honey
sweet and sticky and pure
flowing
and swirling
the kind you can’t find in bottles at the store
the kind you don’t think to save
Because after a while
all of it drained from me
and dripped away
and I was bare
but it wasn’t ok
So I used the things you can find at the store
to make myself smooth and beautiful
And I let the bugs crawl away
and left the grass alone
and focused on playing with boys I could flirt with
I sucked in my stomach
and I made sure that my knees were bare
but that my face was not
and tried to be lovely
But for who?
A body
A human
A body of humans
I have become a symbiosis
of many bodies
and I have lost myself in the mass
I know my face
my honey face
sweet and sticky and pure
and bare
and I cannot find it
Instead I have this face
your face
their face
and this body
your body
their body
and this mind
which is still my own
which is still stained from dirt and grass
which still dissects ants and beetles with its boy cousins
which still lets its stomach relax and be full
even though my body can’t
And it sees you
and it sees them
scooping up the honey that pools around my feet
that trickles from my lips
that drips down my hips
and lapping it up because it is so sweet and wonderful
and then reconstructing me
into a notion
the notion of a woman
and I say
oh
I can wipe off my face
and rinse off my body
and try to be bare once again
but I cannot succeed
because the saliva of your words
and of their words
has been absorbed by my skin
and thrust the honey from my pores
I am no longer a child
but because of you
and because of them
I am no longer me
And I am left wondering
what it is like
to be bare