The Words We Keep

She was sitting in a bookstore in New York, in the toy section, with a little boy who played at a Lego table. On her arm was a tattoo with words that wrapped themselves around her biceps and down her arm. I’d never seen so many words on an arm and they were delicately written.  I wondered what the words meant to her and why she’d decided to keep them, probably forever, there on her arm.

I was just breezing into the bookstore to buy a present. I bought the book, took the elevator down and turned around and rode back up.  I had to ask her about her tattoo. Was it a story? A song she loved?  So I asked.

She smiled and said, “They’re poems.”  She’d written one for her mother.  The other poems were for her sisters.

We keep words in so many places, notes tucked inside books, quotes on a fridge, cards with words we love in a favorite box or a kitchen drawer, words on our walls. Words that anchor us for a couple of minutes or make us laugh or remind us. She can look at her arm and find her mother there and her sisters too.