Balance

    Her slender fingers framed around my wrist as she pressed the pen onto my skin, the ink bleeding on steadily and intentionally. Slowly, surely, she cursived her way across my wrist, tracking on my body in demure, ebony thought.
    “Don’t look,” she murmured through her smile, her lips quietly parting as she concentrated hard. And though it was a simple act of tattooing, it spoke of so much more.
    The scene, two friends on a bed, one wracked emotionally by life while the other leaned over her arm, imparting peace the way she knew best. The calm of her presence, her sincerity, her intentionality. Sometimes it is enough to simply be with someone. And sometimes words need not be spoken. There is a feeling that passes between you both. You are not alone.
    As the rain drops slid slowly down the window, I did my best to stop those that threatened to push out of my eyes, concentrating instead on the feel of the inky wetness left by her slow and deliberate tracing.
    “Balance.” My eyes flicked from focusing on the window and back onto my wrist. “That’s what you need in your life right now.” And there it was, solid and sable and stark against white skin. Firm. A gentle reminder that the sadness and frustration I felt was part of human existence. Inevitable. Measured on the scale of being alive, balanced against the joy that coursed daily through the veins underneath her tattoo and broke out in smiles upon my face.
    Comme ci, Comme ça, like this, like that.
    Such is life. A balance of sobs and smiles, kisses hello and goodbye, passions, pushing, perseverance. When we agree to life’s pleasures we also agree to its pains. And yet, the presence of such pains make the pleasures so much sweeter. A tightrope performance that calls for equilibrium in every aspect of every part of existence.