Traditional style tattoo of a grey shaded anchor wrapped in rope with two red roses on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Anchor and roses on a thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A black and grey anchor wrapped in rope sits across the thigh, with a rope coil at the lower edge and a rope tail at the left. Two red roses with dark red shading and green leaves sit at the upper left and right of the anchor. The anchor uses bold outlines and soft grey shading, while the roses are filled in solid red with white highlights.

Traditional Thigh Anchor Rope Rose Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The frost has got into the pump again, so I am writing this by the range with the kettle going every ten minutes and your father's oilskins steaming on the rail. Mr Pollard came up from the quay this morning to say the Esperance is back in, and the bosun wants her hold scrubbed before Thursday. I told him you would be home for Christmas or I would know the reason why, and he laughed the way he does when he thinks I am being fierce for show.

The rose bush is still in the window box under the snow, which I did not think would survive. I dug it up from the lane the week after you went and put it in a tub, and it has put out one red bloom every month since, as if it had been told a story and did not want to miss the end. Your Aunt Win says that is nonsense. She also says the anchor on the mantel wants polishing, and she is right about that, so I have been at it with vinegar and the old rag.

I keep thinking about the rope you sent back from Valparaiso, the length of it coiled up in the drawer with the buttons. You wrote that a good hitch holds because the knot remembers the strain. I did not know sailors said such things. I laid it out on the table this morning and it made a little circle of its own, as if it had decided to keep the shape it was given.

So come home with the manifest in your head and not your boots, and bring me the cold stories you have not yet told. The anchor will still be there. So will the roses, if the frost lets them.

Your loving mother, Nell