Naked

A short short story by yours truly

You don’t know a thing about dead people, not one GD thing.
How did it start? It started with brown paint smudged on her chin as she lay on the ground looking at the ceiling.
Or it started when Adam looked down and saw his nakedness, the sweet taste still on his lips, when first he hated.
Or it started with a father who feared.
Or it started when a child had been born of the dead, cut like the pit of a ripe peach from the lifeless form of her mother, one-half heathen, one-half saint, one-half dead, one-half alive. The child had seen with her own eyes, smelled it in her nostrils still clogged with amniotic fluid, felt it run through her very own veins in those minutes between her mother’s death and the cutting of the chord.
They say you are not really born until the day your mother gets out of the birthing bed. Here I am still waiting. I never finished this thing. One-half born. One-half unborn.
The Reverend had been born again. Born so many times and ashamed of his nakedness every time. Born until he didn’t notice any more. All the way born from a long line of hard men. Born to spread good news, to drain the love from his own heart and give it away.
His daughter, who is she? One-half fire. One-half water. One-half alive. One half-dead. Born again, but not all the way born. Ashamed of her nakedness.
The brown smudge of paint on a woman of unwelcome blood, born only once, and unashamed of her nakedness. Naked, proud, who gave her love away and kept it for herself as well. The sister of a dead mother come to love like the Reverend could not.
Would not.
It started with brown paint, a lost job, a secret witnessed from the bottom of a closet, and an empty seat in the Reverend’s church.
Or it started with a prairie dog on a TV screen, and a heartbroken woman who would not go to church, between a girl who had never seen a prairie dog and a man who was ashamed of his nakedness.
Or it started with a girl who wished she were an orphan, but only half-way wished.
If only they knew what it felt like under my skin, in between my skin and muscle. If they knew about that place, they would take me away from here.
Let us consider the color of the Reverend’s face:
Pink, the color of the meat of a watermelon when he was calm.
The color of a wet brick when he was irate.
He was irate most of the time. Like when he came home from church to find the woman watching prairie dogs on the television, proof that she was not ashamed of her nakedness.
Sometimes people throw things when they are angry and leave a purple knot to prove it. She threw the flipper at him today.
And what if a woman who had enough love inside for herself found that sometimes anger was stronger than love? What if she got angry at her nakedness? What if she forgot to care?
And what if the Reverend forgot what it felt like to be born that first time? What if he forgot what he needed? What if his face turned the color of flesh dipped in a vat of hot oil.