What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?
I have never been drawn to tattoos.
I understand why people get them. A tattoo can carry memory, identity, grief, love, survival, belonging. It can mean something deep and true. I can see that.
It is simply that I have always found the human body beautiful as it is.
Skin has never seemed blank to me. It already carries so much: expression, age, movement, vulnerability, strength. The body is not an empty canvas. It is already a living thing of beauty.
But thinking about tattoos has made me reflect on another kind of marking. Some things are written on the skin. Other things are written in the self.
The first may be visible at a glance. The second reveals itself over time.
You see it in kindness that has become instinctive. In patience learned through difficulty. In courage that does not need to announce itself. In gentleness shaped by suffering. In humility, mercy, truthfulness, love.
These are markings too.
They do not sit on the surface, but they shape a life from within. They are not decorative, but they are beautiful. Perhaps the adornment I am most drawn to is character.
Not because outward beauty does not matter. It does. I still think the human body is beautiful. But there is another beauty that shines through a person rather than simply resting upon them.
To be adorned by character: that seems to me a wonderful thing to desire.
The Afterword 
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