Sometimes I want a barcode tattoo

that scans as the numbers of your name

and what suns we were born under 

that make us burn this way.



I want the readout to be a list of our firsts --

dates and grid distinctions of locations on the earth,

on our bodies.

I want it there permanently

not so I can remember,

	because who could ever forget,

but because I want to announce it

to people who cannot imagine

that this is possible

that love exists

that I, being me, am able to finally feel 

what it is

meant to be.



But you don’t like tattoos. And I don’t care about that

as long as you like the canvas

on which they’ll now likely never be.



Sometimes I want to tattoo “breathe”

into my wrist

across the vein that practically pounded through

my skin 

begging to reach air itself

hoping for a glimpse

of the summer sky in 1992

but you said I don’t need the reminder

anymore and it’s true.



Instead, I want my breaths 

to match yours starting today

because I’m impatient

and in love

with you, a man I thought was as lost to me as 

girlish dreams of fairytales princes, 

as lost as my own once-upon-a-time 

innocence and misspent youth.



It makes me 

want to pour out apologies 

like wine during a lover’s feast

over all the time 

we can never have back.



But you shhussssh me

and tell me 

it doesn’t matter because we have 

all the time

that’s left in the world,

in our matching heartbeats and breaths,

so now my permanent announcement, by default,

has become the glow in my face,

the sparkle in my eyes, and

the light in my smile that says

to all the world 

that  I found everything I need in you.



They tease me, and so do you, but I don’t care about that

as long as you love

the part of me that radiates 

underneath this skin

on which tattoos will now likely never be.

02/07/2009

Posted on 02/07/2009
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