Naed I

It is humid as hell. It's a close suffocating heat that saps me of the strength to walk at a normal productive pace. I am wearing a short white t-shirt style dress. It doesn't belong to me. It does not fit.

Halfway through the slow measured shuffle to the coffee shop, a three-and-a-half block voyage I make two times each day, I am caught in a sudden torrential downpour. From searing hot sun to sheets of sideways rain, as always, it comes with little warning. This is more than common – this brief, but violent late afternoon cleansing – throughout the month of June, here in South Miami. I know better than to wear white.

Soaked through as I round the corner of Tenth and West, the thin knit fabric clings to me. I hate the way it feels against my skin. I want to tear it off. I want to rip it from my body and hurl it into the street. Though I know they can all see right through it, I am impervious to the hungry sting of strange eyes penetrating the sopping garment. I am only grateful none can see my steady stream of tears through the heavy rain.

You love to tell the story of the time my pinstriped wraparound dress got caught in the seatbelt in the back of the taxi and I stepped right out of it as I exited the cab. How your eyes would dance at the mental image of me standing on the busy downtown street corner in only my bra and panties and shoes, having to bend back in through the car door – thong to the world – to retrieve my waylaid dress, while the frantic cabdriver stammered his shock and innocence.

I wish I knew how to put that light back in your eyes.

If you could see me now, I fear you might only see the tears – veiled though they are from the eyes of others. You might also note the dress, still unreturned, and judge me for that. Still, I cling to the hope you might instead see my beauty, if not my heart.

I wish you could see me now.

Forgetting to cool it first with my breath, the first sip of coffee burns my tongue. The pain is not enough to take my mind off the uncomfortable clutch of the wet dress. Overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness, I close my eyes against the sting of tears and rain. I call out to you from that nameless spot inside myself – three inches above my bellybutton and three more inches in – from where, wordless, I imagine I can engage your spirit... regardless of the miles or troubles between us.

Come help me out of this clammy ill-fitting shroud and we'll throw it into the street together. Ravish me here on the sidewalk in the rain, while the speeding cars mar it in muddy tire-tracks and shred it to useless rags.

I can feel you press my body against the front window of the coffee shop. The cold glass soothes my stinging flesh. I can smell your skin. I can taste the rain between our lips, the coffee on your tongue – hot and sweet. I feel your hands take hold of my thighs and lift me upward.

The heavy scent of green heat swells up as the parched grasses along the curb sate their greedy thirst. Inside, cool dry customers feast their eyes on us through the rain-streaked pane – some rapt in anticipation, some frozen in disbelief – all with overpriced complicated coffees in hand.

Your tongue plunges into my open mouth. I hear the excited squeal of wet glass as my naked ass slides tight against its wet surface, but we are both deaf to the split decision of outrage and delight from the staff and patrons inside.

If we could hear them, we would not care. Their presence is as insignificant – their judgment, as disposable – as that discarded dress. They see only our outsides anyway – these superficial cases we carry our true and secret beauty around in. They watch us from so far below this great and private plain, our entangled forms veiled in rainwater streamers to remind them they cannot really see us at all.

Why did we ever let them look? Why did we ever let them in?

Your shirt is open. My nipples harden against your rain-soaked chest. The heat of your body travels through me in strange shiver-like waves. I hear the soft familiar jingle of your belt buckle and my mouth fills in Pavlovian response.

I feel us disappearing into a place I've longed to return to. Together we fade in and out of mortal view, as we call upon the rain to bathe us. Wash us. Release and restore us. Your heartbeat pounds inside my breast again, and mine in yours. Returned. Reborn. Too high for them to reach, we are untouchable. Eye-to-eye, I can see inside your soul. We exchange a silent vow to be unbreakable once more.

Sometimes your eyes grow so dark – almost black – when we are face-to-face, as close as this. I am never certain if it happens because you cannot see at all or if it is, as I choose to believe, your soul looking back at me.

It has been so long since I've felt you really see me.

I feel your fingers open me for your slow sweet slide up into my waiting warmth. Together we smile, feel our bodies sigh in perfect unison at the welcome familiarity. My body swallows you with the natural ease of an intake of breath. There is undeniable comfort in how we fit – a peace between our outer shells, a balm for our weary souls.

To the naked eye, we are fucking – like animals without conscience, rutting in the street – but this cannot be a common thing. This cannot be just sex. It petrifies me with its persistent presence when so much else falls out of reach. It stuns me with its healing powers each and every time – even when one or both of us feels distant or disconnected – there are always flashes of complete and utter honesty, moments when nothing can touch us.

Yes, to the onlooker this is just a gratuitous display. We grope with violent and reckless abandon. It looks like lust. It reads in black and white. If these earthbound perceptions could penetrate the rain, the surface, the public façade –the raw and perhaps ugly exposure – would they even know what they were seeing?

Sweet grace and restoration, we soak each other in beyond their line of sight.

I don't want to feel them. If I allow it, the weight of their eyes grows heavy on me. My chest tightens. I find it hard to breathe. I need to shut out the static. I need to hear you laugh.

Your fingers slide up inside me, next to your cock. They stretch me as your thumb slips across my clit. I cup your swollen rain-slick balls in my right hand and tug them upward to join in the heat between us.

I breathe you in and out like air. You anoint yourself in me – baptize your core in my water.

Next to my shoulder, your hand slides against the window – your fingers spread and claw – smearing the glass with me. I see it. Sweet milky streams run down the pane. The heat rises. I can smell our sex. I am going to come. In perfect time, our breathing grows louder to acknowledge – slows to emphasize – the dizzy climb to our climax, while your eyes penetrate me deeper than your body ever could.

I think I can feel you seeing me,

really

seeing me.

The slick brick-red sidewalk reflects the shape of us back up at me. It is a shape I know. My heart filters out the strange silver ripples and distortion, the ghosts, until I see so clearly what we both know so well.

I hear the sweet sounds of orgasm weaving in and out of the driving rain. I cannot distinguish your voice from my own. I only know the sound is beautiful.

We come as one. There is no shame in being half of a whole.

My tears still flow, but they are different now. They're of joy and laughter – release – they are my undying, unwavering, unbreakable love and you suck them from my face with a hunger that's gone unfed for more years than you care to count. They trickle down your throat and fill you up. They seep into your flesh and heal your pain. They bleed into your eyes and restore your sight.

See me. Know me. Let yourself remember.

Our bodies melt together as the rain lets up just as quickly as it came. The sun seems to dry it in mid-air. For the first time, we hear the roar of passing traffic, the loud splash of gutter-spray from the busy street, and the excited hollers in witness to our naked spectacle emerging from car windows.

I feel your cock soften and slide from me. I hear a gentle quiet laughter in my ear. It is yours.

Sunlight flashes from your eyes, though I swear they're lit from within, and – sighted for the first time in more years than I care to count – you see me.

You really see me.

There is a filthy wet rag in the gutter: trampled and all but forgotten. There is no need to retrieve it. Its whereabouts might enter your mind or mine – from time to time, in the years to come – but we will not dwell on its absence.

It does not belong with us. It does not fit.

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