Her Tattoos

She shows them to me when she comes in,
lifting her shirt,
in the library,
excited to see what I think.
She doesn’t care if the mother’s are watching.
She never cares who is watching.

This is her new obsession,
tattoos,
and maybe also the boys that give them to her.
But it will change too,
because she is young
and when we are young
we can love and hate easier.
The coin stretches the depth of the sea
and we can’t yet feel
the nights that will come,
when they are so close together
sheer like a spider’s thread
when they blur,
and the world flips over,
you, standing there

scarred, frothing, like a mad dog
trapped in the complete imperfection
the mediocrity,
the distant buzzing hum of a phone line going dead.
She doesn’t know yet how hard letting go can be
or what the mirror can tell you.
She hasn’t been shipwrecked, yet.
But she is a woman, and a creator, so it is only a matter of time.

But for now,
she shows me her tattoos
and tells me
as she pulls up pictures on her little phone
what she’s going to get next
because she has so much skin left to cover
and so much time ahead of her.