TATTOO – Priyasha G

November 7, 2025

Two cities ago the spring was
high voltage, wet
Here it is blond and sweet. Hot steel and
the stench of warm plastic

Johnny is suffocating. Whispering, like it’s a prayer or a warning
It’s filth, I think, the
sweetness of pain and
what it does to me. How rot can shine, make us quiver

Barefoot and flushed
I watch his jaw tighten, the flicker
between breath and restraint. Fragile and feral
as the needle spits ink into the shallow bloom of flesh
As a girl I’d watch the horses quiver under the reins,
the ripple of power before the break, and now
Johnny’s cry is deeply moving
& obscene & holy & too close to joy. A
body trying to translate itself.
I adore the sultry fever,
the heat as it rises. The colour of his breath
saline, sugar, ozone — a shade with no surface

I try
I think that I try
to stay somewhere untouched
but the hum burrows under my ribs. Something
gives— his skin, my gaze, the distance

When the needle stops, Johnny breathes
softly, as if the pain were a secret
Neither of us speak when the air restarts
Ink, salt, breath—
a small and private weather