when i was younger, the prospect of having words or visuals inked on my body, engraved into my skin like the years of a life on a tombstone, repulsed me.
why would someone want that sort of a forever? what if the person they just got tattooed the name of in a thought bubble right below their collar bone, beside the beating of their heart, just did not belong there? what if they got their name changed?
at thirteen was when i saw someone getting one. it was my elder sister at her seventeenth birthday. as she got her skin engraved by a guy wearing liprings as if decoration was all he ever needed his lips for, the only thing i could notice was the faint ghost of a smile as she proudly stared at the mirror showing her her shoulder blades. two weeks after that night she stopped wearing full sleeved tee shirts and started sporting off-shouldered tops for her musical notes for everyone to spectate.
and at sixteen, i met you.
and you changed my everything.
my poetry transformed like a caterpillar into a butterfly, your omnipresence in my heart a cocoon for my words to finally grow in. when i hadn’t met you, i could only write about jealousy and the naked face of our shameless society but now… now my poetry held passionate words of love and my metaphors weren’t of tombstones anymore.
we instantly clicked when we met and i think a part of the reason why was that we were open to each other’s thoughts and ideas, all we wanted was to soak each other’s words into ourselves. so you started listening to one direction. and i started reading stephen king.
the first time i knew i wanted a piece of you on me, with me, forever, was when you came up to me with your hands in your pockets and the body you were ashamed of, and you said,
“you and i, baby, we’re perfect, and i’ve known this since you gave me the best song ever to listen to, baby i can tell it’s gotta be you by the little things that you do, baby one way or another i’ve got to get you, you’re the one thing that could keep my night from changing”—
and although it was only fun and games at that point of time, i knew i could trust you for writing the story of my life, i knew i could hand you the paper and the pen, and get them back along with, somehow, no tragic ending, but still a pulitzer.
so how could i not want the trace of your finger along the line of my spine after all of this?
i finally grasped the concept of forever.
the tattoo parlor was a small little shack in the middle of nowhere, you held my hand as i shrieked in pain at the needle into my skin. there were no second thoughts, no going back. the black ink of my love for you on paper had found its righteous destination. the infinity sign on my wrist and the word “home” along my pinky went perfectly with my high heels, and with my combat boots. i soon took my bracelets and my rings off.
after you left, as i had known you would do before i’d even met you, i still couldn’t quite understand my logic for my hatred of tattoos. now when i wrote, i looked at the silently screaming four-lettered love letter on my pinky for inspiration. the infinity on my wrist continued to be the longest i’d spent without yearning for a change. even after you left, the butterfly that you had made out of my poetry stretched out its colourful wings and flew across my sky. the music notes on my sister’s back still made the same sounds.
it was only when i realized that my tattoos needed to be retouched that i understood the incapability of my younger self to believe in forevers.
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