So, here is a little story I wrote about the last time I was tattooed. It was originally in Cassiopeia magazine, and I have posted it here before - but I am still very fond and quite proud of it. It all still applies.
Yes, again I am amid turmoil. I wonder how many more times in my life I will be tattooed.
Footsteps in the Snow
I suppose we have tattoos because we want
to be more like snowflakes – unique, special, unlike any other. We can kid ourselves.
My tattooist, Francisco, has the skin of
someone who did not see snow until last winter.
Nearly every inch of it is tattooed.
He is from Brazil and saw grey London snow for the first time in
December – a sight that delighted him beyond my comprehension. Not unrelatedly, he has a tiny sprinkling of
freckles across the bridge of his nose that elevates his face from really nice
looking to beautiful.
It is not coincidental that Francisco is
tattooing me today amid turmoil – to mark and erase all at once. Footsteps in the snow. Firmly planted, for me, myself, where only I
can see them. He knows this
instinctively and he looks after me; our conversation on the tattooist’s table
is worth a year of therapy. I am so
happy that he will always have been involved in my body, a part of this
permanent reminder.
What a strange job – such responsibility
and permanence. I wonder if he feels the
weight of it when he goes home at night.
I want to ask him, but we have had to stop our incessant talking because
it is making me move around too much and he cannot work. It is hard for me to stay still.
With no other distraction from the pain, I
recite mantras in my head, force myself into a rhythm.
Thefuturethefuturethefuture.
DaddyyoubastardI’mthrough. DaddyyoubastardI’mthrough. (Like a train, that one.)
Iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou.
Above Francisco’s whirring gun: the sound
of footsteps, crunching in the snow, where nobody will ever see them.
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