when the tattoo artist shaved my arm for my latest inking i wasn’t quite prepared for the truth it exposed

some things are buried deep down so deep they become dream so deep they are forgotten mementos of another life

but in the glaring light of the day i saw them staring up at me in their pale puckered forms and each ignited a flare of memory

deep grooves brought from cigarettes branded through the soft flesh watched me as i ran fingers over them in sorrow

they had long been covered by the darkened hair of adolescence to be no more than markers on the roadmap of time before

now the hair is growing back in that itchy way it is prone to do yet the image of the scars is revived once again for me

so many cuts burns and scrapes have left indelible art upon the decidedly broken covering of a decidedly broken soul

i feel more like a victorian age painting left to slowly decay in an attic covered with a musty cloth long forgotten in myth

but sometimes those scars whether self inflicted or inflicted upon spark a scene that plays on loop in a melancholy mind

those are the nights when sleep won’t come when dreams wave over head like the sword of damocles ever falling

this gordian knot of childhood trauma remains uncleft by mortal hands instead pushed into the dusty corners of the mind

but the soul recalls every strike every slap every hanger every word every burn every injury every single thing

luckily it is better at blending the colors into a seamless palate of gray rather than the burnt orange umbra of anguish