I tattooed 'it just doesn’t matter' on Henry.

 

People hear that phrase and think it’s about indifference, but it never was. To me, it meant the opposite. It was a reminder not to let every disappointment become a disaster. Not to spend our lives bleeding over things that would eventually become stories. It was our way of saying, we’ll survive this too.

 

Funny, considering.

 

He left his own marks behind.

 

A tiny heart beneath my left arm. So small it’s easy to forget it’s there until I catch it unexpectedly in the mirror. It feels less like a tattoo and more like a pressed flower tucked inside a book—evidence that a moment existed, even if the season has long since passed.

 

And then there’s cute.

 

Written in the crease of my right elbow, directly over a vein. Such a simple word. Almost embarrassingly simple.

 

Not beautiful. Not brilliant. Not forever.

 

Just cute.

 

I think that’s why it stays with me.

 

For years I thought love was supposed to be proven through grand gestures and dramatic promises. But of all the things that could have been written into my skin, the word he chose was something softer. Something ordinary. It wasn’t asking me to become anything. It wasn’t asking me to earn it.

 

It was simply an observation.

 

A moment in time.

 

Now all three tattoos feel connected somehow. His phrase on his body. His heart on mine. His handwriting tracing a vein beneath my skin.

 

Little artifacts from a relationship that no longer exists.

 

And maybe that’s what it just doesn’t matter was always trying to teach me.

 

Not that love doesn’t matter. Not that loss doesn’t matter.

 

But that eventually the story stops belonging to the ending.

 

The tattoos remain. The memories remain. The people we were remain.

 

The rest is just what happened afterward.