Hideous Tattoos

I am sitting in the courtyard of my restaurant again, Jere is sitting next to me. If I looked up, I could see the stars, but my eyes are glued on his hands. Not that his hands wouldn’t be pretty, but it’s something else that fascinates me about them. “Jere?”, I say. “Yes, Goldie?”, he smiles and I can’t help myself to smile as well. “Why…? Um… You know, I hate tattoos, because they just look hideous. But yours are so beautiful and gorgeous and they look so … um well selected, like you’ve given a lot of thought into them. So forgive me asking, do they mean anything?” He is grinning. I can see that he’s amused by my babbling, but he answers: “You are forgiven.” He gives me one hand and I hold it. I outline the flower there with my fingers as he explains: “I got that tattoo a week after my mother’s funeral. You know, her names was…” “Melitta Bianchi”, I remember. “Exactly”, he continues, “it means bee and if you look closely at the flower you can see the bee sitting on it.” I nod as I see it. Now he gives me his other hand with a far bigger tattoo that wasn’t there the day I hired him. As I hold both of his hands, I can see the cigarette at the back of his hand and the smoke that goes all the way up his arm. “I did that coincidentally the day after opening day. Because that day marked the 365th after my last cigarette”, I feel him watching me carefully. When I look up, I say: “What made you stop?… Or why did you even begin?” Jere has to think about that for a moment, then he says: “I guess I used it as a way to cope with all that has happened in my life. I’d always lit one when life got ugly, kind of calming myself down, forgetting what happend. Now I make everything to a tattoo. I uh… make it my bitch, you know.” We both start laughing at the way he phrased it, then he looks at me and says: “I don’t know. How do you cope?” Now I have to think about that for a moment, then I respond with: “I like to go to church and I write poems…” “You believe in God?”, he asks hastily. “Don’t get me wrong, I believe in him too. I just figured after all that has happened to you, you must have a great reason why you still believe.” I scoff: “It’s not so great. I… I just fell in love with the idea that there is someone who knows all my mistakes and all the darkest parts of me and still would live and die for me, because that is his way.” I feel him smile and I look up wondering what’s so funny, but he just says: “Sounds pretty great to me. Except I don’t think he is just an idea.” “I know”, I sigh and hold his hands tighter. We sit there like this for a long time, not speaking, just enjoying eachothers presence.

“Marigold?”, he breaks the silence. I look up to him and he says: “Can I hear one of your poems?” “If you want to”, I smile. It takes me a second to decide which one I should tell him. From all the poems I wrote, there was only one explicitly about him. I begin with the first words of “My Hand in Yours”, but our faces move closer and somewhere in the middle his hand lies on my cheek. I flinch away before I can realise his intent. Just a few inches, but his hand is no longer on my cheek. “I’m sorry, Jere”, I breathe out, “I just can’t right now. I was just in a relationship…” “Hey, hey, I understand. I’ll wait”, he takes my head in both his hands and kisses my forehead. “But you don’t have to”, I whisper underneath my breath, but I just hear him smile: “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”