I don’t have tattoos to hide my skin

I use them to show what I represent within

As my body is the tongue that my mind speaks

And the stories I have on my body are still incomplete.

 

Day by day the world bends and prays 

On men and women who lack values and daze

Into a dream that fails them each day

Yet they do not use their language to speak it away...

 

With my tattoos not only do I let them see me 

But also what you meant to me

My heart scared and bruised

Almost as black and blue as me and you.

Pitch black like the women on my arm

Who’s seen what it’s like to be broken and scarred

But rather than having her in pieces, broken, and in sorrow

She’s helped me pushed through, giving me a better tomorrow

Loneliness, something I tended to find

She won’t leave me lonely in this lifetime;

 

Because this tattoo is for me, myself, and I

 

And my heart, which has been marked, will heal next time.

-G