Aurea Mediocritas
"OH WATERS, TEEM WITH MEDICINE TO KEEP MY BODY SAFE FROM HARM, SO THAT I MAY LONG SEE THE SUN." - Rig Veda
Tresha Faye Haefner - "Tattoos on Young women in Spring"
I sit thinking about the tattoo
I never got. Wonder if work would allow me
to slap one on my wrist.
The barista calls up my order, with a sleeve
of blue and green turtles inked into her arm.
A man next to me closes his briefcase,
blank, black, smooth as a cloth
soaked in chloroform.
Kafka’s story of a rat who says the world used to be big,
then the walls went up.
This morning the gates of my apartment complex opened,
then closed.
The Food Max across the way has gotten older and dirtier,
the liquor light brighter every night.
I know now what I have never been able to say before.
I will never get a tattoo, or be young again.
I sit down to read another book.
Sign my contract for one more year of work.
The island-like freckle on my right hand afloat in a sea of white.
Arm of a mannequin. Ghost of a girl
killed when she was young.
