Shoulder
She flies south to visit me
though it is deep summer.
Curved in ink
up her hind left shoulder—
its fine filaments splayed
as though in wind-riled disarray—
a solitary plume.
*
Curved in ink—
needle ink. Jade ink, violet.
Emerald, black.
Indelible accoutrement
to her camisole’s silk strap,
the peacock feather’s eye
will not blink back.
Wielded ink, truth-or-dare ink,
it stalks me, brazen,
will not unmeet my shy eye.
I close my eyes: the afterimage
is green glare, flash of sun
succumbing to horizon.
*
Truth-or-dare ink.
Truth: in a tattoo parlor,
you can choose your pain,
tell it where to go, what to be.
Dare: against our mother’s counsel,
she’s new in her skin
for the second time,
flesh welted red and tender,
the hurt of what it took to arrive here—
in time, in body—
already vestigial and dwindling still,
like sun-blanked, rain-rinsed
chalk ebbing back into sidewalk,
the last blue silt carried off
in a sudden wind.
*
Vestigial and dwindling still,
the sear of late light solves
her shirt’s thin cotton
as she walks away from me—
a parsed wing silhouetted there,
faint as shadow, and as fixed.
