Mark had his right bicep tattooed completely black to hide an old tattoo of a male stick
figure he got several years earlier. It would have been easy to cover with a much better
tattoo, but he didn’t want the hassle of choosing another one he could grow to hate
eventually like the first one. He was always reading from a thick novel at work. Everyone
talked about him, saying how smart he was. One day I noticed his book was upside down,
told him. Now you know my secret, he said laughing. He never had much money, telling
me most of his wage went supporting his mother’s alcohol, and gambling addiction. It was
just the 2 of them: he had to look after her. I remembered my uncle spending the first few
years of adulthood in jail. None of the family visiting him while he was there, or ever
speaking about it after. The silence in his eyes when he was released. Never breaking the
law again. Mark stopped turning up for work. I’d see him occasionally, walking with an
older woman, I assumed was his mother. Over a month passed. Tom our manager sacked
him, apologised, said he had no choice. Shortly after Mark took his life. Leaping from a
scenic cliff on a beautiful clear Monday morning. I thought about his tattoo. The stick man
he got completely covered in black: all the other tattoos he could have used to hide it.
