Amemiko learned about India ink from Ala and Tenari when they were all just old enough to drive cars legally. During Seventh period they'd lean back against the windows perched on top of the dead radiators like mocking birds and stick themselves with stained pins until the thousands of tiny dots became something else. Moving pictures of crosses and tear drops and the heads of Chinese dragons breathing fire. That's what they said it felt like. Fire. She never wanted them to try. Even when they snuck up on her in the photography dark room and held her down. Made three small dots that can be traced into the shape of a triangle on the soft insides of her right thigh. While Ala whispered the names. Altair. Vega. Deneb. His on the shoulder. Tenari's on the calf. Amemiko didn't cry. In feverish dreams nights afterward, she made them write entire stories all over her body.

The dots, now, pass life posing as freckles.

She carries her empty canvas body through the soft puddling night winter streets. Walking her way to something gone but not forgotten. They've not seen one another in 9 months. A mistake she now needs to apologize for in 270 different ways. Benjamin's door is red lacquer like pornographic fingernail polish or the gaudy tourist shops on the edges of Chinatown. Her heart knocks the door. Down. She's going to write it all. When he opens the door to this apartment they used to share. She's choreographed the movements like childhood ballet. Her hand to his mouth. Her mouth to the soft spot on his neck just under the jaw. The slow delicate peel of clothes. Until only his clean canvas remains.

On the porch, Amemiko reaches into her pocket, clicks the glass jars of black ink together with her fingertips, waiting.