Tattoo

n i c o l e f o r e m a n

In the night we stand still,
touching like two trees refusing roots.
That's when you teach me permanence
of ink, the phoenix escaping the blades
of your shoulders.

You want to tell me about that bird.
And the story begins:
blue cotton rises with help
of your wrists crossed like a Christian
waiting to be saved;

And continues:
jeans ..skin ..cotton
jeans ..skin
skin ....and ...skin
cotton rises again and again.

People used to need poems
when words did not last
past their rhymes:
You tell me to yell the word infinity

Infinity! While you write an eight on its side
across my wrist
and I watch it bleed
into kaleidoscope shapes.
Skin resists these lines,
but the ink on the page remains;
and though you are gone,
these words are still.