(AMIDST TRAFFIC is one of the short stories from the collection "Amidst Traffic" -- www.msauret.com)
Lyonya defined her life by the tattooed words scribbled on her skin. They ran like trails of broken thoughts. Idioms lost, clashing against one another like cars mangled across a stretch of highway. Those tattoos. They were a habit among her many.
In all her scribbling, those tattoos etched out messages, dates, thoughts, ideas… reminding her of things she couldn’t keep track of in her head. They had all been remarkably brilliant in the speck of time in which they were fabricated, all short-term memories printed into permanency. But fading.
Her first mark was gradually dissolving into a smeary, blue stain, becoming blotchier and blotchier by the year.
“Believe!” it read, now with the blemished ink finding depth in her skin. Fading. Becoming like the rest. Defining her with words she once defined. There were hundreds of lines and phrases, running all the way up her arms and shoulders, some on her thighs and calves, some hidden beneath her foot, self-tattooed as if the act of writing could help her remember more than the ink itself.
But she couldn’t remember.
There was only the illusion of remembering.
Lyonya stared at that first word etched onto her wrist. Believe! Believe in what? It wasn’t something magical or promising. Believe in believing, is all she could think of. Like a knotted rope meant to be untied so it could be knotted again.
Believe!
The word itself was becoming submerged by all the other scribbles that surrounded it. Too often it sunk beneath reams of bracelets, which kept it hidden through most of the day. Now she had so many of those bracelets she had lost track of how many there were. Each of those stood for a week, a month or a year she had found remarkable at the time. Every one of them stood for a memory, each one holding a folded symbol.
They were all she had left: those symbols. They were moments lost in her tattoos and bracelets and necklaces that draped down to her chest. Yet, she felt the necessity of those symbols. She felt the necessity of her written words.
Just like now.
It was time for another tattoo. She needed to write this one down. Now. Before she forgot. Because forgetting was her biggest fear.
Make it permanent before it fades, she told herself, and this thought brought her a moment of calm.
She sat at her frail kitchen table with rust gnawing up the wobbling, metal legs. Among the piles of papers and trash, she found her homemade tattoo gun. She used a guitar string for the needle, which made the humming of the little motor feel musical when she wrote.
She had become quick with the ink.
On her forearm she found a spot of untainted skin that squeezed between I hate people and Like a glorified majesty on the 21st. She had to slide the reams of jangling bracelets up her arm to find the vacant spot. Her writing hand became steady when she tattooed. She brought the pointed guitar string to her blank, pale skin. The metal needle pierced and drummed. An emotion took charge of her, and all she felt now was the need to place it down into permanency. If she didn’t, she might forget tomorrow. She might forget an hour from now. The letters formed like petroleum scratches.
Make Zephan
Before she could complete the phrase, her cat, Adara, meowed from inside her purse, breaking Lyonya away from her ink.
“What is it?” she asked delicately. She switched off the motor and put the needle down.
“Hungry?”
YOU ARE READING
Amidst Traffic
Short Story"Amidst Traffic" is a collection of high-caliber, interconnected short stories with a literary flair: A short-order cook digs a hole in his back yard to escape nightmares of mutilated children; A woman covers her body in tattoos to hold on to emotio...
