In the deep

Into the night you will escape with my whole body leavin traces of me behind. Loose hairs. Shoes. A fully charged cell phone. You won't even stop to consider what you have left behind but you care not about being arrested for taking me away. After all it was voluntary. I wanted you to come and sweep me off my feet, although I never thought it would be you, dear stranger. You picked me up half naked and carried me off while I still slept. Somehow I did not wake up. I just slept quietly in your arms. Breathing deeply. While the rest of my apartment fell into its silent murmur of sink drops and fridge heartbeat.

Slowly I'll start to realize who I really am, set wandering around the earth with just myself, a home on two legs, the hermit crab inching his way across the oceanfloor. In the bubbling darkness of the vast ocean, life rocks to and fro in aquatic time. Seaweed sways. Fish dart, scavenging. In a realm so full of bubbles and their changing currents, little creatures should take breaths one step at a time, letting the sand sift underfoot.

Today I saw a big armed man with a tattoo of Thomas Jefferson. At first his body marking wasn't in focus, and that automatic part of me thought: thug. But then that currency-imagery portrait came into view. Jefferson?! Permanently emblazon yourself with such a patriotic symbol. I guess TJ was a cool dude. Why not? I'd never tattoo myself. What if I changed my mind? What if tomorrow I decided I didn't love my mother that much? TOO LATE! There is something about the permanence of a tattooo that requires a lot of commitment. But it also involves the less honorable. You're doing graffitti on your body, such a sacred thing (your body that is). A body should be tended with care, nursed to healthy, strengthened, caressed. When your body becomes a brick wall upon which you douse caustically coloured paints and hurl bullets at.... it's a wonder you can still be alive...