I should not have gotten the tattoo that says
May All Beings Be Happy and Free on my left arm,
running from the inside of my elbow to the wrist
in 20 pt. Verdana sans-serif type.

My serotonin level that day was so elevated
that it deceived me
into an optimistic feeling that I was finally
ready to be pure. I have been happy in that way before

and you would think I would have learned by now
that I inevitably return to earth
like a leaky, gradually deflating helium balloon.

Now I see that my great tattoo might better have been
a customized sweatshirt purchased online for twenty dollars,
that said Short Attention Span,
or University of Repetitive Emotion.

How quickly things pass. How long mistakes last.
How unrealistic I am when left to my own devices.
When I rolled up my shirt sleeve at the tattoo emporium
to have that sentence stenciled into my pale flesh

I was getting into a relationship
I could not possibly sustain.
May All Beings Be Happy and Free—what a fitting punishment
for the hubris of my passing and unstable self-esteem!

And yet, it is my life, mine to squander as I will.
—That is a kind of freedom, I suppose.
And I have a story, which is still
unfinished;

that makes me kind of happy, too.