Is it like falling, childhood palms out, on asphalt? Or like having a bandage ripped off skin: but backward somehow, ripped onto skin? Is this helping you at all? It lies between Astroturf burn and dull bruise, yet concentrated: the sweep, the abruptness of those events in a minute flesh place. And made worse by purpose, by premeditation: it doesn’t have the shock-pureness that would come with accident: or the release of necessity. It’s a pain transaction: a little shyster deal: I don’t much care for it.
This is a dry tattoo: inkless, tiny heart-shape, as if I were being inoculated against small infatuations. It will last no longer than a cat-scratch. Missi, the young tattooing lady, dwells on my forearm: she has a high threshold for pain, mine. Her instrument buzzes: hornet-bitchy, mean: the impatient noise that you get being let in at the front door of a cheap apartment house. I’d like her to stop: I’m half-hearted now. In and out, the machine will pound its several raking, arid needles under my skin: to deposit no message there: pointed, pointless. Already, three days later, the scab image is fading: rather more like old ringworm than heart. I’m a curable romantic.
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