His hands began to shake as the needle vibrated.

His muscles tensed all at once.

He had a clear vision of creative energy.

He was about to begin yet another creation from his heart.



He moved his steady hand to the woman’s shoulder.

It was a gracefully sloping shoulder not yet marred with age.

It was shaven hairless for this moment,

The moment art would change her body forever.



The needle punctured her skin and continued to vibrate,

Releasing veins of colored shading,

Defined merely at this moment by the intensity and contrast.

The harder and longer he held the needle in place,

The deeper the ink went into the fleshy shoulder .



As the man worked, his piece of art began to form.

The thin outlines, slowly began to filled themselves in.

The colors began to melt together to form a picture,

A picture that told more than a thousand words.



A picture that told the story of the artist.

A picture that told the story of the woman.

A picture that told a story all on its own.

A picture that will forever create more stories for the woman.



A tattoo of a dragon covered the woman’s shoulder,

It was a mixture of dark blacks and reds all bleeding into the next scale.

The woman looked in the mirror at the man’s work,

Small tears began to form at the corner of her eyes.



She was not crying for the pain she felt searing all over her back.

She was not crying for the blobs of blood that were spotted all over the dragon.

She was crying for the new found happiness she now had,

A happiness that this man created with his art.



His art created in the woman a sense of beauty.

His art created a sense of strength.

His art created a sense of pride the woman had never felt before.



The beauty of his work,

Made the woman she the beauty in herself.

The man saw what he had done and was proud.

He expected nothing from the woman but her money.



The man was shocked when the woman leaned over and kissed him right on the lips.

It was a cool, gentle, tear-stained kiss,

But it said so much more than a simple thank you ever could.



With that one kiss she had left the man with a memory that would forever remind him,

Of the appreciation she had for his work,

His art.