Ink

permanent

adjective

per·​ma·​nent ˈpər-mə-nənt  

ˈpərm-nənt

1

: continuing or enduring without fundamental or marked change : stable

the museum's permanent art collection

an accident causing permanent injury

2a

: not easily removed, washed away, or erased 

b

: making marks that cannot easily be removed

I got my first tattoo at 18. My mom and favorite cousin who was living with us at the time came too, and we all got something that commemorated and reminded us of our Mema, who had passed some years before. We sprinkled her ashes in the ink, letting her memory absorb into our skin so it could never forget, even if our minds do. I designed my own, a combination of my artist signature that graced all my teenage drawings and her initials. A blending of everything I loved with a stylized heart at the center. A Phoenix feather from ashes, literally and figuratively. 

My second tattoo I got while studying abroad in Swansea, Wales. A compass with a vibrant background splash of watercolor. It was done by an apprentice and abused during the healing process as I traipsed many damp miles of travel. Imperfect and wonderful, like me, like my time there, like my life as a whole. 

Next a solar system along my collarbone, following the lines of my body that yearned for space, Pluto included as a tiny dot in the lineup, a temporal artifact of my childhood of learning about our 9 planet system. We are both more now than we were then. 

My first paired tattoo I got with my little sister, both of us choosing a sun and moon motif. Similar but different, forever bound by one another's gravity, at various times shining and reflecting and blocking and absorbing each other's light. 

Next a plunge, a promise, a vow of risk and reward; a paired tattoo with a romantic partner, something I was always warned away from for its permanence. But he makes me love the idea of permanence, of growth, of union. Another sun and moon theme, shining from behind a ponderosa plunging roots into the earth, placed on my spine where it will follow me always. On our first meeting he stepped off the trail to smell the warm vanilla of a ponderosa and I fell in love like a comet. Our story is Earth and space and everything in between. He is my sun, my moon, my galaxy of stars, he keeps me both grounded and reaching, secures me and illuminates me.

Next a quote, my first text, a band around my arm of song lyrics that burrowed into my psyche and lived there for months, for years on repeat. The chorus burst onto the scene like a tsunami, lifting my soul before shattering it on the rocks, capturing the full breadth of human emotion. Teenage me never would have believed Bo Burnham would be so influential, but teenage Bo probably wouldn't have either. I got the words on me to remember the cyclical nature of everything (everything, everything, everything). The good, the bad, the joy, the pain, humanity and our fallibilities and our triumphs, everything that ever was and ever will be – it's always almost over, it's always just begun. Those words got me through a lot, and I hope will continue to be a balm as I move through my own cycles and failures and triumphs.

Taking a last hurrah trip around Colorado before moving across the country, I got am impulsive flash to commemorate a decision that was anything but. We would be leaving the place I was born, the place I met my spouse, the place I went to college, the place where almost everyone I had ever known still lived. Mountains, a bleached skull, and a flying saucer arcing overhead – a little nostalgic and a little strange, just like I imagine it will be to visit from now on. 

Another paired tattoo suggested by my new sister in law, groovy and joyful and witchy and wonderful just like them. The newest in a trend that I am falling in love with, marking permanent reminders of those I love and have loved on my skin. I am a patchwork of everyone I have ever known both inside and out, and I have several more planned to add to the tableau that is me. They are permanent in a different way than I am permanent, they are fixed on my body but change as the body changes, fixed in image even as their meanings may change. Both my self and my tattoos are a developing story, intertwined with those of others in a beautiful context. I hope to never stop getting them.

I hope to leave this world as a work of art.