Evening

I want to kiss your tattoo

Why?

Because I want to be where somebody else was, where somebody left a mark.

But they're gone now.  They came and left.

No...I don't think so.  I think whenever you see it, whenever you notice it, it is a reminder.

It is a reminder.

Which is why I want my lips there, I want my tongue to feel the rough ink, the slight change in the smooth skin to the upraised line.  I want to it to be like a snake-bite, where I can suck out the poison.

But it's not poison...at least to me.

Yet you hide it.

Well....yes...I do.  

Then it's like a kinda poison.  It's not public.  It's intimate...poison is only poison when it is inside of you...when it is coursing through your veins...when it's in a bottle or in a box it's worthless and harmless...sometimes though when it touches your skin it is dangerous.  

Like an acid?

Like an acid.  But one that never leaves.

But I love my tattoo.

That's not my point.

So what is it then?

Maybe I'm trying to erase something that happened without me.

Well...it did.  And there are years without you...you cannot ignore them.

You don't have polaroids of your past days stuck on your mirror.  You don't have pictures of past lovers...but you keep those inside of you. Invisible to me.  I said I wanted to kiss your tattoo...not erase it.

Like marking your territory?

No...nothing at all like that.

Then what.

Because if you let me kiss there, then you've shared.  

I've shared.

You've shared.  And I didn't say I'd stop there.  It's more like a starting place.

A starting place?

Yes.  Like an X on a treasure map.

I like that.

There is a lot of truth there.

The first real storm of the spring season was bellowing outside, the rhythmic drum of rain and a now and again disturbance of thunder.  He wasn't looking to see if there was any lightning.  Instead his eyes were taking her in, like she was the doorway of some unexplored art museum, and while he knew a lot about what was inside he knew there were a few secrets that if revealed would lead to even more revealing.  She had scars, she had ink.  He thought he knew where...and if he could get there he could get anywhere.  Mostly though, if he thought about it deliberately, he wanted to have his mouth upon her and feel her respond, perhaps hands in his hair, lightning flashing outside like cameras while in his mind he created images that might best be described as intimate.