Bloom
There’s that certain smell of tangy liniment and sterile tools. You might find it in a medical building, but here it smelled so different. She still wasn’t used to it, that foreign scent that accompanied her, edged with the feeling of plastic wrap, the rawness of her skin, the slight hint of blood. Maybe it was the smell of permanence. The alien scent of forever.
The gun buzzed close to her ear, unearthing goosebumps all over her arm. The artist was talking but she never quite listened. This wasn’t easy for her. She didn’t want to make small talk. Slowly, hands stretched the skin on her shoulder, and the first ripples of ink pricked into her body.
This was what therapy felt like. This was what would make the dreams go away. She closed her eyes and settled into that trance, with the evil stinging buzz gnawing away at her skin, roughly handled by gloved hands to push the drips away. She felt the pain badly each time, but it didn’t feel as bad as how she felt in her heart.
There he was, in her mind again. In her dreams again. His face was solemn and hopeful, she imagined it that way. When he came to see her, he had a little smile like he was proud of himself, like he was happy to see her. Clutched in his hands without yet offering was a bouquet of white and pink lilies, longer stemmed than she could imagine them to be, bigger and more bountiful than she could recall ever seeing them. He held them as a cushion to his smile. He had not been practiced at apologies.
It wasn’t anything that needed the flowers. He had been overdoing it all along. They had been upset with one another over some triviality, some silly comment or the offbeat way it was said. Phones could be such unreliable devices in matters of the heart. She had cried, but did not need to, indeed her eyes were drying by the minute and she considered calling back. She waited at the phone. She heard an ambulance go by and thought little of it. The call she got was not the one she was expecting.
“How are you feeling?” asked the artist, quieting the gun for a moment as he adjusted his position. She opened her eyes to look at him, shrugged, and closed them again. Maybe if I felt fine, she thought, I wouldn’t be getting this tattoo.
His car was outside and surrounded. The phone call might still have been connected as she ran towards the edge of the street, not wanting to stop for traffic or anyone holding out their hands. That was his car, the white grill crumpled inward so deeply it looked only half its original size. White coats were everywhere, and she could already see the blood. He was being loaded onto a bed, but with a sheet over his face. It was over. The door was wrenched off the side, giving a clear view of splattered blood and a long bouquet of lilies.
The ones that he held to himself every night when he visited. He would look at her, those patient loving eyes, full of playful apologies and she would look back to him without saying a word. Eventually he would open his mouth to speak. His expression never changed as no words escaped, but blood poured a river down his chin and body.
She would gasp herself awake, choking on sobs. She liked to think she had been asleep. She was afraid she might not have been at all.
Her knuckles were raw. Her forearm was raw. It had been a few weeks in between, but only just enough to start the process of discomfort all over again with the sticky scabs and gooey flakes of skin peeling off under her touch. The color was halfway applied, the stems and brilliant paper aching from her fingers to her elbow to meet up with a new abrasive portion of greys, whites, delicate pinks digging into her shoulder. The blossoms wrapped her arm, all the way up and falling across her chest. Her right side was less human than bouquet. It had attracted much attention.
“Disgusting,” she had overheard, comments here and there. A smirk with a low “Regrets much?” occasionally passed her way, as though this arm was twenty hours, thousands of dollars and a permanent mark that she had undergone just for shallow fashion. As though she had not given it proper thought. There were mountains of praise, but she heard them just as little. The work was very beautiful, but it was penance.
The bundle of needles crossed her shoulder, scraping across the bone underneath. She squinted her eyes, never quite used to the sensation even after so many sessions. She had started the day after he died, her pure unmarked skin becoming a map of her experience. Weeks later, this would be the last.
People asked her what her tattoo meant. She wouldn’t answer, if she knew at all. Every night and even in the day she saw his eyes, his flowing mouth, his flowers. It was a joke, really. It was to prove that something in her life could be permanent.
A short for my creative writing show, Wordplay. See the show at ThisIsWordplay.com.
