Small colour tattoo of a pink, purple and teal awareness ribbon on the inner forearm near the wrist, with a dark outline.

Awareness ribbon on a wrist

Forearm · Colour · Photo

A small awareness ribbon is tattooed on the inner forearm close to the wrist, with a black outline and flat colour fills. The ribbon is pink across the middle, purple in the loops and teal at the top of the loop. The plain pale skin and the hand gripping the wrist from the right fill the frame, with the tattoo placed centrally on the arm.

Forearm Ribbon Awareness ribbon Loop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Morag, the ferry didn't run on Tuesday, so I've had three days to think about the ribbons on the pier railings. Mrs Dunlop has been tying them there since the spring, one a week, each loop knotted tight so the wind can't have it. Pink for the middle, she says, because that's where the heart of the thing sits, then purple for the loops where people go round and round trying to explain themselves, and teal at the very top so there's something to look up at.

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I went down this morning to see whether the new one had held. It had, though somebody had pulled the tail loose and tied it again in a granny knot, which Mrs Dunlop would never allow. She was sitting on the bollard with a tin of pins, glaring at the sea as if it owed her money. I asked her who had done it. She said the boy from the fish van, who had asked her for a ribbon the way you'd ask for a plaster.

She said that was how they all started, asking for something small. Then she pressed a spare length into my palm, the pink gone soft from handling, and told me to take it to you. I've no idea what you're meant to do with it. Hang it on the line, I suppose, where the gulls can see.

Write soon. The boat is coming Friday if the weather holds. Love, Isla