‘Living Ink’ by Sarah James I come round from my faint less than half-waythrough the moment being marked into my skin.The tattooist yawns and passes me a glass of water;my younger sister squeezes my hand and steadies mewith her calmness, as she did during my long labour. Bicycle falls scar my knees but that c-sectionwas my first scalpel and stitching. My sister’s bracedme through the worst cuts, even a forked lifelineon my palm from a red wine bottle that smashedon Gran’s stone floor when I was still a toddler. Although I’m older, she’s lived far more than me,is armed with a small collection of inked charms.The tattooist revs up his machine again, scrapes pain into(and out of?) my left shoulder bared to the sharp100-watt light and hot room, tightening around us. I’ve asked for a tawny owl on a moonlit branchfleshed with green leaves – wisdom, flight and hopethat hasn’t rotted or broken away from the tree.Wings that haven’t lost their wide spanor feathered grace, but can, in a single heartbeat, reach across the ocean now between us. Meet the Poet Sarah James is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer. Winner of the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine 2020 and CP Aware Award Prize for Poetry 2021, her collection Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic is forthcoming in 2022. Website: http://www.sarah-james.co.uk. She also runs V. Press, publishing poetry and flash fiction. Share this:Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Like this:Like Loading... Published by fragmentedvoices A small, independent press based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, and Prague, the Czech Republic View all posts by fragmentedvoices