The Tattoo
The university was a tree flagged for felling.
They were lopping off departments like limbs.
Music fell with a sonorous rustling.
There were ants in the Anthropology branch.
A hive of bees hummed in the Classics.
Now they were sawing into Philosophy.
The chair was invited to take a seat,
Then told it would be his last year. Terminal.
He took it well — one might say stoically.
Breaking out in sudden sympathy, the provost
Suggested an end-of-the-year lunch.
He kept teaching his classes, with neither more
Nor less intensity, consoled his colleagues,
Walked the quad at night, hand grasping wrist
Behind his back, under trees that were not
Universities, simply trees. He was thinking
Of getting a tattoo. He knew just what he wanted
It to say, and where. He asked a student
Whose arms were covered in them
Where he’d gone. The parlor was downtown,
In the part of the city where he used to go
To drink, back when he still drank.
When he told the woman what he wanted,
She told him that they had a policy when
It came to face tattoos. He had to come back
A week later. He came back a week later.
In the ornate script he chose, she wrote LOVE
Across his forehead, the L and the E above
His eyes. She stopped often, stepping back,
Then coming close again. Had he ever written
A word with such care, with such a sense
Of responsibility? He vowed to write that way
From then on. He could smell her breath,
Sweet from vaping. “Love hurts,” he joked.
“Ha,” she said. Then she was done.
And so he bore love into the world,
Like an altar boy bearing the monstrance.
His students stared, then went back to staring
Out the windows, dreaming of summer,
While he taught Socrates. His colleagues
Avoided him the way people avoid someone
In mourning. His dog didn’t notice. At lunch,
The provost tried to meet his eyes, but hers
Kept floating up to the word. She hardly touched
Her salad while talking, apologetically,
Of future cuts, as if it might console him
To know his department would not be
The last. They’re cutting into English now.
Someone is clearing away poetry.
The chipper is chewing the humanities up
And spewing it out as mulch to be spread
Around the trunk of the tree to keep
The weeds down. That way, they won’t need
So many groundskeepers. And the man
With LOVE tattooed on his forehead spends
His days writing at the foot of the tree,
In the shade of the dollar-colored leaves.
1 Comment
No posts
This storytelling is remarkable. It just kept coming at me---the pacing and intensity. Wow. Thank you for sharing this.