"There, now you're tattooed. With Permanent Sharpie...", she said, " Scars are better though, don't you think?" She said it batting her eyes.

We had just met that night and were up on a roof, half sober, watching lightning cross the lake, listening to velvet rumbles of distant thunder.

Later someone copied it down off my back:

"Look!
How Deep the Sky,
Never ending,
Like asking Why...
I am yours.
Be Mine?

Love Tahira
608-332-934?

I fell hard, and dropped out of the University to travel half way around the world with her. The sharpied 'tattoo' eventually disappeared, but it was the scars I carry inside from that ruinous college romance, the unrequited love, which impacted every relationship to follow; they were transformative. Even now the experience continues to change me. All that could never be understood from the skin of things.

Love those scars, their accidental beauty.