My Tattoo
I thought I wanted to wear
the Sacred Heart, to represent
education through suffering,
how we’re pierced to flame.
But when I cruised
the inkshop’s dragons,
cobalt tigers and eagles
in billowy smokes,
my allegiance wavered.
Butch lexicon,
anchors and arrows,
a sailor’s iconic charms –
tempting, but none
of them me. What noun
would you want
spoken on your skin
your whole life through?
I tried to picture what
I’d never want erased
and saw a fire ring corona
of spiked rays,
flaring tongues
surrounding – an emptiness,
an open space?
I made my mind up.
I sat in the waiting room chair.
then something (my nerve?
faith in the guy
with biker boots
and indigo hands?)
wavered. It wasn’t fear;
nothing hurts like grief,
and I’m used to that.
His dreaming needle
was beside the point;
don’t I already bear
the etched and flaring marks
of an inky trade?
What once was skin
has turned to something
made; written and revised
beneath these sleeves:
hearts and banners,
daggers and flowers and names.
I fled. Then I came back again;
isn’t there always
a little more room
on the skin? It’s too late
to be unwritten,
and I’m much too scrawled
to ever be erased.
Go ahead: prick and stipple
and ink me in:
I’ll never be naked again.
From here on out,
I wear the sun,
albeit blue.
–Mark Doty
Singing oneness!
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