Two small tattoos on the ankles of a person standing barefoot in the sea shallows: a black anchor on the left leg and a blue balloon on the right, in fine line style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anchor and balloon tattoos on ankles

Fine line · Ankle · Mixed · Photo

Two small tattoos sit on the ankles of a person standing barefoot in shallow water on a beach. On the left leg, a solid black anchor with a ring and curved flukes is drawn in clean linework with light shading. On the right leg, a pale blue balloon with a thin string trails downwards, shaded softly against a sunset sky and sea in the background.

Fine line Ankle Anchor Balloon Beach Sea Ankle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maud, the wind has finally dropped and the Brighid Rose is riding easy at her mooring off Cadgwith, so I am writing this on the back of a tide table with the good pencil. You asked after Tom's boy in your last letter. He is fine, mostly. He has taken to following the gulls along the harbour wall, which his mother says is a sign he will go to sea, and his father says is a sign he will lose his shoes.

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I went down to the slip this morning to fetch the spare anchor from Dougie's shed, the one with the rusted ring that nobody will haul up the cliff. Dougie had it wrapped in a tarpaulin like a corpse, and when I pulled the cloth back the flukes were still bright where the paint had worn off. I stood there with it on my shoulder and thought of the day you and I went out past the breakwater with a balloon on a string, the one Lenny won at the fair, and how it kept trying to pull you over the side of the dinghy while you laughed at it.

That balloon went up over the Lizard and never came down again, as far as I know. I suppose it is still up there somewhere, a blue speck among the clouds, going about its business while we go about ours. I bolted the anchor to the bow this afternoon, and it sits there now, heavy and black and certain. Come down at the weekend if you can. I will show you the line, and you can tell me whether the balloon was ever really ours to keep.