the only tattoos

the late-night shop had
a finger man. main street filled with
sick flowers. rain came in spit takes. 
i was wearing those cheap ghost shoes
& you had bleeding blue hair. 
it was either the end of the semester
or the end of a kind of flesh.
before, we drank sodas in the wawa parking lot.
i put my feet up on the dashboard.
outside, everyone was wearing their skin.
a stoplight coughed cars through town.
we talked in the future tense. we will.
we should. we can. we could. 
a man without any eyes asked us
if we were ladies & if he could
show us a planet. we declined. we were
not ladies. got a parking ticket.
go a second on purpose. the man 
in the shop listened to bad music 
that we pretended to like. we chose 
monsters from his gallery. you, a rose,
me a tombstone. it was less about
the imagine & more about the etching. 
i was glass. the man took a phonecall
with his father. kissed the phone. 
ate tortilla chips & wiped his hands 
on my lap. night painted the window.
all of our bodies warped. a folding chair
becoming a hotel bible. your rose, molding. 
when it was done the man slapped 
a paper towel on the wound. was still
on the phone with his father. 
was still hovering an inch or so 
above the ground. you bought a gun 
from the toy store on the way out
of town. it was gone before we got home.
in my phone, girls buzzed like jupiter beetles.
all of them gummy-shark-less. 
one asked if i could go on a date 
the next day. i said yes in the moment
but never went.