Hers is a narrative in skin. There are castles at her
ankles, drawbridges moored to the dimples on the inner junction to feet. The
castle is burning, flames swaying mid-shin, and they sway whenever she jogs, cascading
inked smoke to offend the clouds at her knees.
It's where tattoos of smoke ebb into tattoos of clouds that
the narrative lives. Here, in the ridges and contours of inked air, the
outlines of weeping and howling human faces emerge. There are no tricks; they
do not murmur or tear at their hair when she does a little dance. They are
remarkably still faces, frozen in mourning, caught in the cloud banks, no matter
what she does. All their moist eyes peer up upon her thighs, to portraits of
catastrophes that brought down the castle below. Their memories have been
wrought across her midriff in sequential art that sags and wrinkles with time,
and yet never loses its poignancy. Perhaps that's because she shows so few
people the memories. Not all body art is public, after all.
