Tattooed, gum-chewing freaks

July, 2007. I lie on my side on the leather chair as the needles vibrate at a couple gazillion RPMs into my flesh. I am getting more ink, tattoo number three. This one is more painful than its predecessors, for more reasons than just the nerves surrounding the hip, residing just below the surface.

April, 2004. It's the last time I'll ever see him. The Nostradamus in me knows that, even if stupid Cupid won't listen. As I prepare to board my plane, I study his face, trying to determine if he knows it too. I don't think he does. He's calling it a break. He's saying when he's ready, he'll be back. He won't.

The black and grey image is permanent on my skin. Two rabbits - one white, one black, each with their own significance - the rune for Pisces and a poingiant phrase translated into Irish. In Latin American folklore, when a young woman sees a white rabbit it means she has met her soul mate. In animal magik, a black rabbit symbolizes lies told and things left unsaid. He is a Pisces, imaginative, romantic, flighty. All of that for him, and the Irish for me: Through our bleeding, we are one.

The memories have stopped coming on so abruptly, so offensively, and I question the art resting above my right hip. Maybe the Pisces sign was too much. Until Christmas Eve, as I board another plane headed to nowhere I wish to be, and his face appears before me once again. I think back to the last Christmas Eve I spent in the air on a plane headed away from where I really wished I could stay. Another bittersweet holiday looming before me, I choke back a tear and bury my face in a book.

Broken hearts heal. But not without scar tissue. My ink doesn't remind me to hurt; I do that well enough on my own. Instead, it tells those who cannot see of the scars they may encounter.