10/29/2023

I have no flowers, only tattoos

Emily Dickinson, in one of her letters to a friend, writes "I have no flowers before me as you had to inspire you. But then you know I can imagine myself inspired by them, and perhaps that will do as well." 

Reading these words, written by the poet when she was fifteen years old, cracked my brain open like the first pistachio in the bag. Suddenly I was swarming with thoughts. About Flowers. About their transience. About the temporary nature of some kinds of gifts. We use flowers to mark an occasion, to communicate a feeling, but the occasions and feelings are as impermanent as the slowly withering beauties in their vases. 

Flowers, at their core, are the promise of their own memory. They are a beautiful invitation to build a new house in the town of your mind. As they wither, the memory grows. They are beautiful, but they are temporary in their beauty. All that remains is the time someone gave you flowers, and the meaning behind them.

In Victorian England, flowers had a complicated web of meanings, enough that an entire cottage industry. These dictionaries, however, saw more use as parlor games and theoreticals than as actual bouquets to decode. In her introduction to Mandy Kirkby’s A Victorian Flower Dictionary, novelist Vanessa Diffenbaugh explains: 

“There is little evidence that the Victorians actually used the language of flowers in a practical way; they didn’t send continuous streams of bouquets to each other, but rather the books were meant for the centre table and were to be studied, indulged in, and played as a game; every young lady wanted to be well-versed in the meanings of flowers.” 

The meanings became more important than the flowers themselves. Symbols. The meanings and moments become more than their symbols. Flowers wilt and disappear, meanings stay with us.

On my left forearm is a tattoo so badly done and poorly cared for that it feels like its own anti-aesthetic. It's a monogram I drew in high school, which should already be a red flag as I learned nothing of value in high school, least of all how to draw. It is a symbol dedicated to Vincent Price, a man and actor who will surely have his own blog post later on (the man looms large as a harvest moon in the night sky of my life). While my love for the man hasn't wavered at all - he is still a picture in my wallet, outliving both my ex-wife’s picture and the deadname on my driver’s license - the tattoo, with its jagged edges and broken lines, its haphazard splashes of color and mottled blackwork, has gone through a journey of self-acceptance like everything else. 

The craft of the tattoo matters, sure, but not as much as the experience of getting it or the rush of looking down at my forearm and remembering the naive teenager who sat in an Ohio tattoo parlor and learned something about pain and something about forever in the same poorly thought-through hour and a half.

I was eighteen when I got the tattoo, fresh out of high school and still utterly confused about who I was, what I wanted to be, and whether or not I was a boy. But, I liked Vincent Price enough to say I probably would forever. There's something comforting in that. The tattoo, for all its flaws, has become a reminder that even as I change and grow and metamorphose into something as distant from the old me as the cold moon over Ohio, I am still certain about somethings, or at least have the chance to be.

Flowers disappear until all you are left with is the memory of their perfect beauty. Tattoos stay with you as reminders of your imperfection. I believe Dickinson is exactly the kind of sentimental dyke who would get a tattoo for every girlfriend, a forever bouquet of women who have held her arm on her arm.

Being trans is a storm of photographs the first few years. It is a desperate clawing at memories that go by in a flurry of firsts: first month on hormones, first date as a girl, first wig, first haircut as a girl, first time someone ma'ams you at the supermarket or the Chipotle. All of these are so numerous, miraculous, and intangible that it's impossible to carry them with you without some of them simply fading.

I have written more words in the past year or so than I likely ever have. Some of these poems and stories and letters are unspeakably bad, some of them are, by my estimation, very good, but all of them are suddenly very important to me.

I read back over my own work, I watch my readings at open mics,and I even go so far as to scroll back through text exchanges where I've felt particularly on.

I have never felt the impulse to do this before. Never felt the pull of archiving my own experience and then poring over them like a monk in servitude to my own God. But now I am my own God. I am transfigured, if you'll forgive the pun. Every moment is a gospel and I am my own apostles, writing it all down before they wither away.

I want the flowers of my transness to last forever. The memories are perfect but fleeting. To accomplish this, I must lean into my craft. I must tattoo them to the page. Some of them will have the rushed inexperience of that day in Ohio, and the certainty.

I was asked recently if I ever planned to publish my work. The short answer was no, but the long answer was convoluted and frantic enough to warrant a second draft, which is this essay.

I might, if there's an audience and I believe the work I'm doing would benefit from it, but I am writing first and foremost, to press my flowers. I am writing because, like Dickinson, I have no flowers. At least, not forever.

What I have are the memories of flowers, what I have is the blemished page, what I have is a body of work I will ink over with so many shitty tattoos. My craft cannot possibly keep up the pace but my left forearm tells me that's okay.

I will write my poems, my blogs, my stories. I will press my flowers.

But then you know I can imagine myself inspired by them, and perhaps that will do as well.

Yours with an open mouth,

-B