REGRET TATTOOS
The tattoo artist said
everyone with multiple tattoos
has at least one regret tattoo,
slip a thumb in a belt loop,
yank down their jeans a bit,
and voilà! an infinity sign
their best friend inked in
with a safety pin weeks before
they stopped speaking
or a murky scorpion
submerged below the surface
of their hip where the sleaziest
tattoo parlor on the planet
stumbled into the drunkest
night of their life.
If there isn’t a blurry rose
behind an ear or a small,
fuzzy heart on a tit
that looks like a bloody tick,
then a jagged butterfly
or crooked spider
made from someone’s initials
stands corrected
on a shoulder.
Skin sags over time,
the pirate skull’s jaw drops—
not so badass anymore—
and sooner or later,
even the best quotes
wear thin like tires,
and translating
the ones in Latin
becomes wearisome
and anticlimactic.
Then the regrets
wear out as well,
until all tattoos
are simply stops
the person has made
along their way,
and their body
no more than the package
handled, tracked,
and postmarked
before being delivered to them
where they are
when they already own
what’s inside.
—from Rattle #78, Winter 2022
__________
John Richard Smith: “My daughter, Tara, was talking with her younger sister, Sam, one night about their tattoos, bad tattoos, tattoos friends wish they didn’t have—regret tattoos, Tara called them. Sam asked Tara if she had any regret tattoos. Tara shrieked, ‘All of them!’ Then laughed and said, ‘And none of them.’ The next morning, I wrote this poem.”
