Mad to Live

is inked on my daughter’s back
between her shoulder blades.

My son’s hands are etched with a heart above one thumb, 
a question mark over the other. 

When my children began to tattoo their skin, 
even modest images scared me. 
I winced at each new embellishment,
wishing them innocence, not scars. 

I remembered sitting in Uncle Bob’s lap 
in that tiny Long Beach apartment,
examining the Navy tattoos he was so ashamed of. 

What did a young man know? he’d say
from the safety of his recliner after the war,
cavalier dark-blue images on his wrinkled skin 
still battling ghosts, remembering friends 
swallowed by a sea more immense
than a boy can imagine. 

But the People of the First Light 
tattooed their bodies with geometric patterns 
and totemic animal symbols, 
skin and hair slicked with bear fat 
to protect them from sun, wind, insects—to shine. 

Nigerian tribes used ichi tattoos to show 
one had lived a long life regardless of age, 
becoming a living ancestor who reincarnated 
parts of oneself while still alive,
illustrating one’s true face. 

I wanted to protect my children 
from the need for protection—
a parent’s misguided love. 

Now my daughter has a full-color sleeve
of a woman’s face emerging from her grandparents’ 
home and the forest of Shangri-la, 
adorned with deer antlers used in her naming ceremony 
when she was four. 

My son has an immense moth on his chest 
with monarch butterfly wings, 
perched on his grandparents’ hexagonal house. 
His left forearm is inscribed with 
We’ll be living in all the oceans now, 

while on the back of his neck is a shadowed entrance 
to a spiral staircase rising to the word Blank . . .
Destiny, wide open.

To cut ichi, the writer Chris Abani says, is to be reborn in light 
because it is impossible to disguise yourself.

To see one’s children, etched in skin and light and ink: 
I stare every chance I get.

This poem first appeared in All the Men Came & Danced,
edited by Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan, Diane Frank, and
Gregory Cioffi.