My tattoos

My tattoos were born when I was 13 years old.
A child with a pin and purloined ink, stabbing in secret for days, until I had . . .
a dot.

My tattoos came from different places, different people, different Mes.
My tattoos say "What was I thinking?"
Say "There was no purpose,"
Say teenage rebellion on permanent display.
My tattoos remind me "That was the boy I loved when I loved the wrong boy," 
"Don't wait to sober up in a shop of buzzing needles on your 21st birthday,"
"And never celebrate psych ward release with a haircut OR tattoo."

My tattoos are a scrapbook of bad decisions but also of who I was when I made them.
Of a hurt little girl trying to paint herself bad ass,
Of a death that never happened but still I mourned,
Of who I was and who I wanted to be.

My tattoos illustrate my life in chronological order.
The birth of my children,
the loves of my life,
the death of a parent.

So much ink stabbed into me,
violently engraved by sterile strangers' hands,
graffiti that will not wash off.

My tattoos are aging poorly, drooping, stretching, wrinkling, folding in upon themselves.
A dragon with cellulite,
a butterfly with shaving scars,
a fairy with stretch marks and all with a story or lesson I lived. 

No meaningful sleeves or spiritual back pieces,
just disconnected images from art books,
from flash posters,
from google
image
search.
None of them match because I was never the same person twice and still I'll get more
Because my scrapbook is not finished yet.

More children born,
more loves in my life,
more dead parents to immortalize on mortal canvas.
Ink will be my memory when my memory fades.
Pictures will remind me of my life when I forget my own name
and I have lived so much life to remember.