Deserving

He runs the gun down my sternum 

wrists pressed against my breasts

the ink sharp from the lip of the gun’s hum.

Exhale only when he loosens. Carrie captures

all of this on film. Photos failing to 

snap my ancestors guiding his hand

down my chest.

I ask him about Rihanna,

and he tells me his friend was pressured

into doing it. She makes a new tattoo appointment

once she returns to America, to cover up 

the indigenous ink she received here

and I’m reminded of my own unworthiness

that I sometimes throw in the backseat 

of my pride. She didn’t deserve that tatau. 

I get that. 

I plan to get my malu one day, but I just don’t feel 

like I deserve it yet, I tell him

as his body is still pressed against mine,

his precision below my chin, steady and solemn.

I find it interesting, he says, when people say 

they don’t feel like they     ‘deserve’ their malu.

To me, your malu feels like your birthright   no? 

I swallow without speaking. 

My breath held captive 

in his indigenous hands.

Between each buzz of the gun’s mouth 

on my indigenous skin.