Everyday Deterioration and Decay

When I was twenty two, I got a tattoo of a rose down the side of my right hand. My tattoo artist reminded me that the type of skin changes where the top of the hand begins to meet the palm side, and that the rose won’t fade evenly as time passes. I had chosen this spot for that reason. Over the years each time I rest my hand onto paper to write or to draw, the tattoo wears down along just one side a bit more and more. I see the time that I have spent creating documented on my own hand.

The way that places wear down serve as proof that they have existed and interacted with the world, long before I was first made aware of them. The browning on the perimeter of leaf when the year starts to turn cold only reminds me of its life absorbing the sun throughout the spring and the summer. The peeling corners of a poster only prompt me to wonder about the person who placed it there, if they took the time to smooth out any wrinkles when now only the wrinkles remain. The one-sided wear of a staircase only makes me think of the toes of shoes chipping away at the concrete several times a day, over decades and decades, without their owners ever taking notice of the single-second-long moment. I think about the marks that I have left and will never know.