Black and grey realistic tattoo of a waving American flag with crosses on the forearm.

American flag and crosses on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A waving American flag fills the forearm, with stars on a dark field and stripes that fade and curl across the skin. Five white-highlighted crosses stand along the lower edge of the flag, set on a ground line. The shading is smooth and soft, with strong contrast and subtle grey tones giving the flag a sense of folds and light.

Realism Forearm American flag Flag Star Stripe Crosses

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The flag had hung from the pole since the spring the Caddis boys went out, and by the drought autumn it had faded along one edge to the colour of weak tea. Marian Pell climbed the ladder with a sewing tin buckled to her belt and a needle between her teeth, because nobody else in Harrow Flats would touch it, and because she had cut the cloth herself from her late father's bedsheets, back when the boys were still arguing over who got to hoist it.

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Behind the barn, on the rise where the wind came off the stubble, five crosses stood in a line. Her husband had cut them from ash and painted them white every April, and he had never once said whose names went on them. He did not need to. The postman knew, and he slowed his van at the gate on the days he had to bring the letters, and kept his eyes on the road.

She worked the red thread in short, even stitches, the way her mother had taught her to mend sheets, following the stripes where they had split and curled back on themselves. The stars were still good. Blue holds better than red in the sun, she had always said, and it was true of cloth and of most other things. She tightened every seam until the stripes lay flat against the wind again, then sat on the top rung and let her hands rest.

When she came down, the wind lifted the flag once and folded it neatly over the crossbar, as if someone had taken hold of the corners. Marian stood in the yard and counted the crosses the way she used to count the children in for supper, one finger at a time, and got five every time.