Leather Speaks: I
At first, a mere whisper. Not a secret murmur through clumsy cupped hands, but a sigh of silk on silk slithering over bare skin. Covering hairpin hips, the wave of curves, small nipples caught behind armored chiffon. The opposite of shedding. She casts her natural body aside binding new skin to someone else’s bones. Duct-tape wound tight wrapped like the dressing of a wound.
Leather Speaks: II
As leather speaks, it’s reflective lips quiver open with tiny silver teeth. Like the locked fingers of clasped hands. But now split and spread apart. Inside a gash. A pale skin smile. Slowly, slowly a coy whisper slips out of its metallic mouth, low and soft. Does it tickle your ear? Come closer, lover. Lean in when leather speaks, beckons you to listen.
Leather Speaks: III
Caught in a silent picture, dripping in leather’s sweet skin. This layer an opaque veil. A negative transparency. Velvet curtain. Do you want to know what goes on underneath? To take her apart, see what makes her: warm light and wavelengths, filled with your desire. And when you finally touch, finally feel her on film stock, you are stopped by a sudden sound. The fantasy broken, fucked by a hard gasp, a crying out. Not from her mouth but second skin, now a shroud made of shadow the leather stops your touch, commands instead Let her speak.
B. Woods is a creative nonfiction essayist and poet living in Huntington, WV. Her work has most recently appeared in Bacopa Literary Review and Storm Cellar Quarterly.