inked :: tattooed :: inscribed

{i am left, she is right}
photo by dramaticelegance

today, i crossed another item off my bucket list.

i now bear my first ink. a small kanji on my right wrist whispers two unknown words that beat with my heart.

:: elder sister ::

they match, her ink and mine. as much as two sisters, so different, can have eternal art on their skin, and it be the same. 

hers is thin, almost airy in its strokes. mine is thicker, bolder, with lightly feathered ends. they're different, like we are. 

but there's still one part that is the same. that one word, six letters that makes them the same. 

sister. 

i find profoundness in the marking of one's skin with permanence. it's a sacred act, a mirroring of the marks that my Father bears on His palms. 

the Son is pierced, the Father is tattooed. 

behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; 
your walls are continually before Me.

inscribe: to write, to carve, to engrave. 

{via pinterest}

there is permanence in this, this thing of marking love on the skin. of speaking volumes to a world that might not understand these strange words we speak of "born again" and "redeemed" and "sanctified."

but they understand ink, and blood, and eternity. 

never erased. 

always there. 

and so i wear ink. it's not my last, not by far. it's beautiful and powerful and so sacred. i'm overwhelmed and undone, almost feeling unworthy by the beauty, the reminder. 

because i'm inscribed on my skin, and i'm inscribed on His palms. 

eternity. engraved.

shared

sometimes i wish i had camera-eyes. recorder ears. 

that all i had to do was blink and freeze every perfect moment, to turn around and download and share with those i love

because there are things i crave to share. 

but the words fall too short. 

i bite my feeble tongue because it cannot do what i wish it could. 

i can't press the glory of these sights. these sounds. oh, i ache to express fully. 

sometimes i wonder why God made us unable to speak our visions. why can we not simply let our lips part and flood this world with all we've seen. why must some things remain silent?

i want to use my tongue to paint the scene. the way the moon glows and the stars sing just so. the richness of the heather and lilac against my cheek. the kiss of wind in that perfect hair-ruffling instant. 

these are moments that i cannot share. 

this is between me and God.

this is sharing intimacy unlike any other with the Lord of Heaven. 

i am not sharing these things with Him

because He is sharing them with me. 

a gift, a moment, a sight so perfect. nothing on this Earth, not a scrap of this beauty, can compare to this realization that this is from Him. 

and so this music in my ear

this sight before my eyes

this moment which i crave to sink into my skin and glow from my core

these are intimacies with the King of Kings. with my Daddy God. 

this is the preciousness of privacy. 

Poem

Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. ~John Keats

I've had an obsession with poetry as long as I can remember.

Ever since I was a little girl, I have been pouring over old, leather-bound volumes, lost in the elegance of the poetic word.

I don't know why the deep and extremely graceful words of poetry have caught my heart the way they have since my youth. It's not something I can really explain, any more than I can explain my love of chocolate or horse-hair paintbrushes.

Maybe it's the openness.

Poetry has an intimacy that prose simply cannot touch.

A strange sort of melodic power unlike any other written form.

It's curious, really.

Prose, the telling of story or the recording of facts in a narrative fashion...it has a magic all its own. But poetry...the incredible flow from line to line, the whisper of thoughts and dreams once hidden, now laid bare.

Both are magic. Both are intimate.

But only one

Can break the rules,

Change the game

And still hypnotize

The soul.

The smell of ink is intoxicating to me - others may have wine, but I have poetry. ~Terri Guillemets