Close view of an abstract black, purple and turquoise brushstroke tattoo sweeping across a woman's shoulder and upper chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Abstract brushstroke tattoo on a shoulder

Shoulder · Mixed · Photo

A woman's shoulder and upper chest with an abstract tattoo of loose black and purple strokes, with a turquoise streak running through the upper edge and a few small dots and flicks trailing off to the right. The linework is painterly and tapered, with soft variations in ink density. The skin is pale and the background is a plain light wall, while she wears an off-shoulder grey top knotted at the waist.

Shoulder Brushstroke Abstract Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hush now, all of you, and let the glasses rest a minute, because this is the bit about Tomas Vell and the swallow that wouldn't land. Years back, when the harbour at Scarrow still smelled of tar, Tomas painted the signs for every boat in the bay. He had one sable brush worn to a point and a pot of ink he mixed himself from soot and linseed. Nobody paid him in coin if they could pay him in fish.

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The summer the bride's grandmother came to the town, she had a blue ribbon in her hair and a sour word for everyone. She asked him to paint her name across the stern of a ferry bound for the islands. He said he would, if she sat still long enough to be measured. She sat for three afternoons, and on the fourth he had the stroke right, a single long pull of black that curled up at the end like a wave about to break, with a sliver of green where the wind caught the wet paint.

Then the ferry sailed and her name was gone under the spray before the first gull reached it. Tomas kept the brush. Every year after, when the herring came back, he flicked a handful of dots off the edge of his canvas and said that was the birds leaving, and that they always came home to whoever kept their watch.

So when you see her dance tonight, remember the stroke and the blue thread running through it. That's the wind, and the wind is what carried her back to him at the end. Raise your glasses to the pair of them, and mind the dots on the floor, because they're his birds, and nobody has ever swept them up.