Mel's Tattoo and Her Mother

I thought this would be a good post for Mother's Day, as will be self-evident. It started, however, with a father-daughter outing. My eldest and I were seeing a play in Manhattan back in December. The show never went off, however, due to some staging difficulties. While we were waiting in the lobby, we were standing next to a woman with the following tattoo, and we got to talking:

This tattoo is on Mel (interestingly enough, a name my wife and mother of my children goes by) who told us how this tattoo came to be:

"My mom had been talking about getting a tattoo after my parents got divorced along time ago, but she was always kind of opposed to tattoos. So I told her if she ever wanted to get one, I'd get one with her. [She] never took me up on it for about ten years and then, two summers ago now, she just called me up one day in August, and was like, you're coming home at the end of October, right? We're getting tattoos and I know what we're getting. And I was like, okay.  Two months is not a lot of warning, and so, she had seen on Facebook people getting semi-colon tattoos as a response to dealing with depression and my mom has dealt with depression her whole life. She was like, I just don't want a semi colon I want to do something better and so we put a lot of thought into it and figured out you can make the body of a dragonfly, which is my mom's favorite animal, into a semi-colon ... it's really subtle and you would never know it's there unless I tell you that it's in there and it's got a water lily because that's her favorite flower ... she has a version of this on her wrist and I have mine on my arm."

Interestingly, a woman standing nearby had overheard Mel telling me this and chimed in that the semi-colon is  "a little more specifically related to survivors of suicide, because the semi-colon could have stopped their life but didn't."

Considering how suicide and depression are intrinsically linked, the semi-colon for depression still makes sense and Mel seemed unphased by the stranger's clarification. Tattoos mean what they mean to the possessor and, even if they mean something to others, it shouldn't detract from their power to the person who has chosen to mark themselves permanently.

Mel credited Jake Phillips (@twistedskullstudios) from Twisted Skull Tattoo Studio in La Crosse, Wisconsin with the tattoo.

Thanks to Mel for sharing her tattoo with us! Wishing Mel's mom and all mother's out there a happy Mother's Day!

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The Tattooed Poets Project: Liz Purvis

Today's tattooed poet is Liz Purvis, who is sharing two tattoos that punctuate her arms:

Liz tells us:

"Chico at Hillsborough Street Tattoos [in Raleigh, NC] did both of these. Getting two small, but generally visible, tattoos was a bit of a birthday present to myself last year after a particularly rough patch. I love the shape of ampersands, and have recently started to use them in my work. Both symbols have ideas of continuity that I find compelling, and I like the daily reminders. The semi-colon is part of The Semi-Colon Project."

Liz shared the following "revised version of my poem 'Before the Movie,' which was previously published in cahoodaloodaling":

Before the Movie

        after Marie Howe, for D.G.B.

My friend David & I are standing outside arguing

about film romances & storylines.

He says he believes there’s such a thing as soul-mates.

I twist my mouth up as I say, I don’t think so. It’s complicated;

we’re complicated; it’s foolish to think

there’s only one person you could spend the rest of your life with

without killing.

David says, Maybe it’s not just one. Maybe we’re trying to find them all,

trying to fit the jagged pieces of our insides to one another.

I tell David that sounds painful.

I ask, & what if you don’t meet them? Or

are you all destined to run into each other, bouncing off cities like pinballs?

We’re leaning back to rest against the cool brick of the building, taking turns

inhaling tar from the same cigarette, & I find myself

repeating what I said to my last love: love is choice, I used to say to him.

D.H. Lawrence says, I prefer my heart to be broken, & when I tell David this he laughs

until he’s coughing, says, That’s crazy.

I know, I say. That’s just exactly it.

Between David’s fingers, our cigarette has burned all the way down

to the filter. He stubs what’s left out on the brick, dotting the wall with ash.

We should probably get tickets,

David says. We should probably go in.

The hall into the theater is cavernous, its vaulted ceiling

covered in mirrored panels staring back at us.

~ ~ ~

Liz Purvis is an MFA candidate in Poetry at NC State. Her work has been published in Deep South Magazine, Damselfly Press, and Colonnades, among others. She has work forthcoming in Zeit|Haus. In 2015, her poem “Before the Movie” was nominated for Independent Best American Poetry by Cahoodaloodaling. She can be reached at liz.purvis.writer@gmail.com.

Thanks to Liz for sharing her lovely tattoos and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2016 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.