A secret is dark and shadowy, slithering itself into new shapes and sizes, new costumes, new guises. I live inside mine the way I live inside my skin, covering myself as best I can but always ashamedly naked underneath my clothing.
I am covered by clothes even in my dreams, even in my subconscious where it does not matter. The uglier secrets deserve more heavy and intricate fabric. Embroidered woollen sock to cushion cracking sole. Padded lace bra to cover taut pink nipple. Layers of stockings and petticoats over gaudy veined thighs.
He lifts his palm to sleeve. Releases a layer. Looks at skin, contemplates clothes and body. One moment. Separate from, secret from the time-world. She breathes his breath.
A modest and lonely window sets sunlight glancing off their dust.
In my dreams I do not feel my own weight, I am not aware of nail or hair or teeth or aching eye. I am not always conspicuously there - a silently fleeting image.
This is not a dream. Underneath his hands there are scars. Scars on soft, intricately creased skin.
Everything I knew of myself was here, within my own private community of secrets and lies, and to strip these layers from me is to betray truths I do not recognise. You catch my breath and hold it there, so that the air inside my lungs might seem familiar even in this newly exposed surreality.
Breath like a fish hook catches in her throat and draws her upward towards his scattered sunshine irises. Dissolved, there is no small puzzle piece of herself she can clutch on to now.
I stand as I am, bare of anything but this moment.
Wordcount: 281
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