body narrative

Much to my loving husband’s chagrin, I adore tattoos. I have several and the collection has grown in recent years. With age I have found a deeper connection with my body, my skin. In spaces where I once wished to obscure my stories, I now find beauty in the reveal. I enjoy the feeling of the art being tattooed. There is something about the needle work that calms and serves as markers of time, moments, and meaning.

The relationship between my body and me is complex at best. The empowerment derived from having a history I control written upon it is more meaningful than I ever imagined.

I love poetry. I first read one of my favorites twenty-five years ago as a senior in college. I was struggling – through a double credit load in order to graduate on time, my aunt’s diagnosis with terminal ovarian cancer, through my own complicated issues. Someone who would become extra special to me – my then professor and subsequent confidante and friend – gave me a poem to read. I still have the photocopy from the 1999 New Yorker.

I have come back to this poem, “Nest”, by Louise Glück, frequently since that piece of paper was handed to me. The lines have carried me through some of my darkest of times. At least I thought it was the poem.

More recently, I’ve realized that while the poem holds considerable influence, it is the person who placed the words in my hands and mind that matters most. When I read the poem, I hear her voice. I see my mentor and dear friend.

I’ve wanted to tattoo the last two lines of the poem on my forearm for years but I struggled with the design. A font felt sterile, and my own hand was unappealing. A few weeks ago, I read the poem again, and I suddenly knew what I needed to do.

Tonight I dragged Sid, who is home on winter break, and his close friend with me to Williamsburg so that I could get my new – and I think perhaps my last – tattoo. New Jersey Transit was on point with delays and lateness, and I gave the teenagers a lesson on how to walk fast and furious like a real New Yorker, but we made it to the studio and the artist, Ao, did an amazing job taking the words of Louise Glück in the handwriting of my friend and transcribing it onto my skin.

Personal narratives can be messy and dark, yet they invariably contain a thread of joy and connectivity—a shared element that ties us to others. We all find ways to inscribe the beauty of those histories.

At this moment, marking the juncture of forty-six years and a friendship that has spanned twenty-five, I find it a profound honor to carry my friend’s handwriting on my body. These are words I’ve echoed as a mantra—gifted to me not merely through a poem but, more importantly, through her enduring presence in my life and for the many years that lie ahead.