“My Tattoo”

by Mark Doty

I thought I wanted to ear

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 the biker books

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.