It was awkward, the way the tattoo artist lifted up your shirt on my birthday ran hands across the tan 16-year-old back before announcing his love of virgin skin skin turning into organic swells of nervous girl, and me, speaking cleanly thinking about bicycles and wheels, letters I probably should have written, not those Chinese characters stitched across your canvas, a radio playing songs about repeated knocking, knocking, but I had tuned it all out, focusing only on the hum