Strip me.
Remove my guards and my walls and my endless goodbyes
Remove my questions and wondering and
Remove all of my control
Use your hands
To read my spine
Press your pages
Into mine
And dog-ear your favorite parts with kisses and sweat and tickling breath.
Watch with awe-struck eyes our words run together as two stories become one.
Strip me.
Remove the blank stares and rehearsed answers
Get behind the walls of doubt and fear and begging you not to come too close
Come close.
Come closer.
Strip me.

Spend time reading the answers before asking more questions
And question my answers
So I know you were listening
Read me and study me and memorize me
And fall asleep singing me and humming me and wake up
Rediscovering me.
Spend more time on my mind and I promise you’ll fall
Look past the skin and the bones and the batting eyelashes
Notice how my cheeks flush and my eyes glisten and my heart starts beating fast
Feel my lungs breathe you in as my eyes roll back drunk
And drink me with your lips until you thirst no more.
Strip me.
Draw a masterpiece across my shoulders with your sticky breath
Breathe fire along the small of my back
Find the needle in the haystack,
Search me
Find me
Strip me

And perhaps then I’ll let you get beneath my clothes.