i'm choosing to forget the stick and poke image, 

of myself in my head. 

my likeness is one i want to be liked. 

the stick and poke is immature and elementary. 

think your high school aquaintance,

who always wanted a tattoo. 

but 15 was still too young. 

so they mutilated the innocent skin of their thighs. 

the mutliated image of my body, my face, my ugly wretched soul

burned and bored its way into my innocent mind. 

the lily pad i was waiting to leap from sunk, 

and we still hadnt learned how to tread water at swimming lessons. 

i took up my place as a barnacled sunken wreck at the bottom of the lake, 

expiditions were sent to retrieve the precious parts of me. 

my mast and my starboard floated like algae to surface. 

but it wasnt until that 15 year old was old enough for their first tattoo,

that i decided to grow my own gills and make myself a mermaid.