Poem

The Tattooed Lady

Around the smallpox vaccination scar
I’d hated since I was a little girl
I had him put this daisy, then its stem
because the flower looked to spidery
without a stem, and then these little leaves.
He said to think of it as just a gift
for a pretty girl. I went to him that night
because my arm was swollen, and I stayed
for twenty years. Around the daisy’s stem
he slowly wound a snake that circled
me with swirls of trailer camps and cheap hotels
and sideshows, yet I loved the masterpiece
that I became to him. His touch had touched
me everywhere. His love is here to see.
-Ted Kooser