Kim Addonizio "First Poem for You"
I like to touch your tattoos in complete
darkness, when I can’t see them. I’m sure of
where they are, know by heart the neat
lines of lightning pulsing just above
your nipple, can find, as if by instinct, the blue
swirls of water on your shoulder where a serpent
twists, facing a dragon. When I pull you
to me, taking you until we’re spent
and quite on the sheets, I love to kiss
the pictures in your skin. They’ll last until
you’re seared to ashes; whatever persists
or turns to pain between us, they will still
be there. Such permanence is terrifying.
So I touch them in the dark’ but touch them, trying.
I particularly like this poem because it is something that is new age. This poem is expressing about a female that is touching the tattoo of the man in which she is sleeping in bed with. Her lover has tattoos on his chest and shoulder in which the speaker traces her fingers over in the dark. The speaker is afraid of a permanent commitment, and this is why she is so fascinated with the tattoos. The scar will be there until the day that the person is cremated, and will be there even if the two lovers part. This is terrifying to the female speaker because something so permanent cannot be reversed easily. I enjoy this poem mostly because I can relate with the speaker on a different level. In my particular relationship, I am the one that has the tattoos, and my fiancé is the person who is feeling them in the dark. He does not really like the fact that I have them because he feels that it is ruining my body, but accepts them.