I lie back, the woven mat biting into my skin as he mixes the ink, calls for his apprentice, and begins the blessing. I let my eyes drift shut, and the first strike lands like thunder. Sharp. Deliberate.

He works with slow, meticulous hands. The tapping sound echoes in my bones. Each line and curve that will become the manumea is placed with care.

As the ink sinks deeper, my thoughts drift.

To Magnolia’s laughter—how it started soft and built like a swell, always louder than she expected.

To the way she looked at me when we made love. Or when we fucked hard.

To when she said ‘I love you.’

I think about her journal entries. Her handwriting. The parts of her she never meant for anyone else to see but gave to me. And how I read those words with shaking hands and couldn’t reconcile them with the cold text that came weeks later.

I feel every inch of this pain. And somehow, it feels earned.

“This bird never stops searching for its mate,” the tattooist says, not looking up from his work.

I close my eyes again, swallowing the lump in my throat.

This ink isn’t for anyone else. It’s not for show, not for meaning wrapped in metaphor. It’s all mine.

My scar. My vow. My proof that she existed.

That I loved her.

That I still do.

He works in silence for a long time, the only sound being that of the rhythmic tap of bone against skin. My breath pushes through clenched teeth, each strike etching her deeper into me.

When it’s done, he leans back, eyes scanning the ink like it’s a story now told in full. His apprentice hands him a small bowl of oil—thick and fragrant, the kind his father used, and his father before him.

He rubs it into my skin, a balm over the fresh wound. Then he places a folded strip of tapa cloth across my chest, the oil darkening the edges as it sinks in.

“To protect what’s sacred,” he says.

I nod, my throat thick. Because she was. She still is.

He rises and gives me a nod that says we’re finished but not done. The pain hasn’t left—but now it has a place. Something I can see and touch. Something that won’t fade.

I sit up, ribs sore, breath thin. But there’s something different in my chest now. Not lighter, not healed. But anchored.

I gather my shirt but don’t put it on. The cloth presses over the tattoo, soothing and stinging all at once. I step out of the fale into the late afternoon sun, where the air smells like salt and soil and stories passed down.

And for the first time in weeks, I inhale a full breath.