अनुभूतियां -- Perceptions

Layers

It was usually the nights when we did “it”. Sometimes we slowly, cautiously peeled each of the tightly wrapped layers of ours. Sometimes we carelessly dropped the layers here and there in haste of doing it. Sometimes we shed the layers on our own and carefully folded a few of them thinking we might need them later. There were nights when we took things slowly, when we just stared at each other's nakedness, sometimes in awe sometimes in curiosity, sometimes with blank faces sometimes with admiring eyes. And then there were nights when we couldn't help ourselves but to explore and feel each other's nakedness. We spent those nights unraveling in each other's arms, disconnecting from ourselves and connecting with each other, falling into our own comfortable rhythm of giving and taking. Those nights were raw and real, filled with moonlight and soft kisses.

It was an “April” afternoon when we did “it” for the first time in daylight. I liked April a little more than the rest of the 12 months.

“April” bought a sense of newness in the air. The smell of flowers blooming, trees reviving and regenerating, the smell of new books and copies packed in school bags, the actual beginning of the year, all of these took place in April. That day when we did “it”, it felt different. Not good different but bad different. You didn't kiss my chin like you always did after we finished, you didn't even meet my eyes after you untangled yourself from me.

Shortly after few days, you left. Was that “April” afternoon a closure for you or did the daylight reflect the ugly parts of my nakedness which you usually ignored when the moonlight enveloped us?

Now that you have gone and it's been a long time, I have started doing “it” again. But now it's different with different people, maybe because I never shed my layers fully. I have learned to wrap those layers so tightly that they seem to be a part of my skin now. It's better this way. 

You never realized that it wasn't the act of actually doing “it' which was intimate but the act of shedding those layers which made us so vulnerable and felt so real.

Written on :- 11th April 2020