Portage Park barista Kiran Rafi’s tattoos remind her of what’s important

Kiran Rafi spends her days slinging coffees from behind the counter of Portage Grounds, an independently owned coffee shop on the Northwest Side.

The gig isn’t just work to Rafi. If her commute from northwest Indiana every day isn’t enough of a clue, the coffee shop’s logo that she had inked on one ankle shows how much the cafe means to her.

The 27-year-old has been working at Portage Grounds, 5501 W. Irving Park Rd. in Portage Park, for seven years.

“I’m an introvert,” says Rafi, who grew up nearby in Albany Park. “But something about Portage Grounds gives me confidence and comfort. And I just feel like it’s a very safe place, and I love it.”

Her permanent tribute to the shop came a few years into her tenure there. The owner was facing some business troubles, and there was a possibility Portage Grounds might be closed. That’s when Rafi, her sister, who also worked there, and one of their coworkers decided to get inked.

“Not only were me and my sister actually family, but my friends and my coworkers became my family as well,” Rafi says.

Kiran Rafi got the Portage Grounds coffee shop’s logo tattooed onto an ankle.

Kiran Rafi

Their boss “thought we were crazy,” Rafi says. “But he was so happy. He was really surprised and appreciative.”

What might have been a memorial tattoo for the business became a living tribute as the coffee shop stayed in business.

Rafi’s other tattoos reflect her affinity for taking what she has lost and turning it into body art.

At 11, Rafi lost her mom to cancer. Since she started getting tattoos at 18, she says she was looking for a piece to honor her.

It wasn’t until she came across the words “I am because you were” that she says she found something that made sense.

The cursive words on the side of Kiran Rafi’s arm — “I am because you were” — serve as a tribute to her mother, who died of cancer.

“I struggled a lot with acceptance even after the fact and, you know, experiencing this time alone without my mom,” she says. “And I definitely use it as a therapeutic reminder. I know that life can get hard, but you can do it with grace and beauty, just like she did.”

She has the phrase next to an image of an angel holding a heart, a figure she says also represents her resilient mother, who gave birth to Rafi’s brother just before she died.

“I always saw her as this strong, strong woman to want to just be able to hold her child no matter what it meant in the end,” Rafi says.

A red angel holding a heart stands out among the black ink on Kiran Rafi’s arm, another tribute to her mother.

The piece is in red ink. Most of her other tattoos are black and white. So it stands out as a “constant, beautiful reminder” of her mother, Rafi says.

“I’m not very religious, but I did grow up in a very religious household,” she says. “So having that angel on my forearm, even though it’s not something that’s necessarily a part of my life now, it’s also a reminder of where I came from and how far I’ve come throughout it all.”

Rafi’s body is scattered with other memorials — bearpaws on her back for her late grandmother, her first tattoo, and a circle of life on her arm for her late grandfather.

“Even if I lose any materialistic item that they may have left me along the way, just knowing that this is etched into my body makes me feel like they’re always with me,” Rafi says.

Through good days and bad, Rafi says, her ink helps ground her. It’s a constant in her life, like the coffee she serves to her regulars.

“People come in telling us about a bad day or something, and we’re just, like, while we’re making your coffee, ‘Tell me about it, I’ll be your therapist for a moment,’ ” she says.