You put on a new dress sewn of exquisite lace,
you force your breasts to stand out, to snare my gaze,
you smear with vermilion pigment your thin pale lips
and arrange your hair in more and more strange piles,
making it even harder for me to search within you,
barricading yourself behind new shapes and colours,
as I barricade myself behind fancy words
and conversations on lofty topics, tiring for both of us.
The greater our desire to be naked, apparent to one another,
the more irresistible becomes our need to hide
behind this homemade beauty and sophistication,
as if we know that, should we really touch each other,
it would be like hitting a nerve, like a wretched remembering
of that which is being healed through the effort of living.