tattoos

I like myself a little bit more with every tattoo that I get, I feel a little bit more real. I am haunted by incorporeality, like I don’t exist: I stare at my empty skin, my arthritic joints, and I come up with a loss.

I glance at my tattoos and I suddenly have stories, I have proof of my existence. I gesture at my Zelda tattoo and my face breaks into a laugh; my stars turn me thoughtful, but not unhappy. My dog is tattooed down my spine in runes, and I miss her, but I loved her, and I’m glad she’s there.

I tried to kill myself once, sort of. It wasn’t quite an active intention, moreso the need for release, for pain, for some feeling that wasn’t the fuzzy white static that was suffocating me at the time. I watched myself distantly, the blood pooling on the floor of my childhood bedroom, indifferent. It was, I don’t know, five, six years ago; there is an ugly white line on my wrist, and I got poetry tattooed on it.

(For the record, I am better, much better. It still crosses my mind sometimes, but now it is a product of the dark days and the white nights, not the default state every time I close my eyes. I am still sad and scared all of the time, but now I’m scared of the things I’m doing, the things I’m planning, instead of the stagnant abyssal absence.)

I like to look at my tattoos and check off things on my fingertips, like reminders: there is poetry on my forearm and beauty on my shoulder; love splayed down my back and new friends on my calf; laughter etched into my right arm.