Fine line black anchor with handwritten script reading I refuse to sink, tattooed on the top of a shoulder near the collarbone.

Anchor and 'I refuse to sink' script on shoulder

Fine line · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A small black anchor sits at the top of the shoulder, with the handwritten words I refuse to sink. running diagonally down towards the collarbone. The linework is thin and even, with solid black ink and no shading. The photograph is shot at a shallow depth of field on warm skin, with a dark garment edge across the lower left and a softly blurred background.

Fine line Lettering Shoulder Anchor Script Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tide had turned by the time Maud reached the slipway, and the harbour master's boy was already hauling the rowing boat up over the weed. Nobody had told her the Gull Mary was still out past the Carrack rocks. Nobody had needed to. Her husband's cap was the only thing the sea had given back, and it sat on the bollard between them like a bad joke.

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She took the oars from the boy without asking. Her hands knew the work better than her head did, and for a mile or so she pulled hard enough to stop thinking about the cold coming up through the planks. Behind her the lighthouse on Scarrow Point went on sweeping its slow white arm across the water, the same as it had every night since before she was born.

They found the boat at dawn, keel up, lying on the sand of the far cove like a beached whale. Tom was sat on the hull with his knees drawn up, soaked to the bone and grinning like a fool. He had the anchor chain looped round one fist and the rope end in the other, and he pointed at the rock where the old iron hook had caught.

"Wouldn't let go," he said. "Neither would I."

Maud looked at the anchor, black with rust and salt, and at the line of his jaw, and decided she would tell him about the cap later. For now she sat down beside him in the wet sand and let the lighthouse keep watching over both of them.