The class has voted, and English teacher Kimberly Vidrine got a tattoo of the line “If the trees can keep dancing, so can I”, designed and tattooed by her friend. The meaning of the tattoo will live on for many years to come, and she will continue the tradition with her future students.

Vidrine tattoos a line of poetry after each school year to remember her sophomore year classes, but it’s up to the students to choose which line it will be.

“I weed out the ones that are stupid or, you know, like not people not taking it seriously,” Vidrine said. “And then I present them with five that I would consider and we vote, the one that gets the most votes wins, and I have occasionally been disappointed because one that I really wanted to win did not.”

Vidrine felt inspired to start this tradition to fix the issue of her students not paying attention to poems they read in class.

“I kind of put the two things together where I had been the only person without any tattoos and this problem I was trying to solve,” Vidrine said. “And thought, well, maybe what I could do is get them to suggest lines and tell them that I would raise the stakes on myself and get any good line as a tattoo.”

Vidrine has been suggested many meaningful lines, but has also been suggested surprising or unexpected lines.

“There’s one from a poem that I can’t remember If we read this year called Autobiography of Eve,” Vidrine said. “And it’s about Eve rebelling in the Garden of Eden, and I was surprised how many people went for the super rebellious line, which was something like, ‘I did not fall from grace, I leaped to freedom’.”

Vidrine has many tattoos and she loves all of them, but she has a particular favorite line.

“I really think my favorite is ‘you’ve travelled this far on the back of every mistake’,” Vidrine said. “Because it’s about not beating yourself up over your mistakes.”

Vidrine’s tattoos stand the test of time, and many of them have grown in meaning overtime.

“After I got this one, ‘If the trees can keep dancing, so can I’, my sister in law was pregnant and her baby died in utero,” Vidrine said. “It was very close to being delivered but at eight months the baby died.”

Despite this tragedy, Vidrine and her sister in law were able to find comfort in her tattoo.

“I had just gotten this tattoo when we went to the baby’s funeral,” Vidrine said. “And she told me about how meaningful this was to her because it kept reminding her that her life was going to go on and everything was going to be okay, so I often think about that little nephew that I never got to meet when I think about this one.”

Vidrine has made many connections with her tattoos, and she has grown to be friends with the tattoo artist that designs all of them.

“We always look forward to our yearly visit and we catch up on everything that’s going on in our lives,” Vidrine said. “So it’s kind of nice because I made a friend that I maybe wouldn’t have made otherwise.”

Vidrine plans to continue this tradition until she runs out of spots in her body to tattoo, at the time of writing this, Vidrine’s sophomore class of 2025 are currently voting on which line she will tattoo, here are the current top five choices.

• From her mouth perfect words exploded, intact formulas of light and darkness.

           – “Emily Dickinson at the Poetry Slam” by Dan Vera

• You do not have to be good

           -“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver

• Love is coming. It’s on its way. Look-

           – “For everyone who tried on the slipper before Cinderella” by Ariana Brown

•  We bring a part of where we are from to every place we go.

          –“Meteor Shower” by Clint Smith

• All of us as vital as the one light we move through.

          -“One Today” by Richard Blanco

“Thinking about a line that could be a bumper sticker, a T-shirt or a tattoo, that’s usually what I say,” Vidrine said. “You want that beautiful, elegant line that can leap out of the poem and live on somebody’s tailgate, or on their T-shirt or bicep.”