The Long Undress (or How to Make Love to a Woman)

What is WolfCast?

Literary performance, essays, and spoken-word confessions from an author known only as Woolfinius Jackson Whürl. A voice from the Dust Meridian, reading the pages he never meant to send.

To draw a woman
is to make love to her.

Not with the crude crescendo of sex,
but slowly—

through the study
of fat and muscle,
the way flesh lies
over bone.

The stretch of skin.
Its surrender.
How afternoon light
wraps her
like a lover’s embrace.

And it cannot be clinical.

Her vulnerability
will not allow it.

She disrobes in layers,
not only cloth
but history—

until she lies
as bare as she can bear.

Though the artist wishes
to lay open the heart itself,
to place upon the dais
all the grief,
all the love,
there is only so much
one sitting can hold.

Because this sort of undressing
takes years.

And it is done
not with fingers,
but with trust.
With words.

So when he renders the breast,
slaving to capture
the caress of north light,

it is not merely flesh
he paints,

but longing,
memory,
the armor she built
around the fist of muscle
beating behind it.

And the eye
does not trespass
upon her tenderness.

It moves over her
like warm water.

And so love is made—

a current passing
between the drawer
and the drawn,

until they are bound forever
in color
and light.