Black filigree swirl tattoo on the side of a torso above the hip, shown in a black and white photo with blue jeans and a rhinestone skull belt buckle.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black swirling filigree tattoo on side ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a bare midriff with a large black tribal-style filigree tattoo of curling swirls and scrolls on the left side of the ribcage, extending towards the waistband. The ink is solid black with bold, flowing linework and some fine tapering tendrils, and the tattoo fills the upper side of the frame. Blue denim jeans and a silver rhinestone skull belt buckle are the only colour in an otherwise greyscale composition.

Ribs Swirl Filigree Tribal Scroll Skull Denim

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The queue at Halvern Bridge has been moving at the pace of a dripping tap since six, and you have spent the wait with your hands on the wheel and the forge scale still grey in your knuckles. On the passenger seat, folded inside a feed sack, is the scroll you made over three weeks in the back of your uncle's yard. The guard at the window wants to know what is in the sack. You tell him it is iron, which is true, and that it is a gate, which is also true, though the gate was meant for a churchyard on the far side that nobody has paid for since spring.

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He lifts the sacking with the end of his pen. Curls that tighten and loosen, tendrils that taper to nothing, a spiral that doubles back on itself like a fern unrolling in reverse. He asks why anyone would make a gate that cannot be climbed. You tell him the point is not keeping people out but keeping them looking. Your master taught you that good filigree hides its bars inside its swirls, so that a man sees the flourish first and the lock second.

He holds the piece up against the grey light coming through the windscreen, and for a moment its shadow lies across the dashboard like ink spilled on a map. Behind you a lorry driver leans on his horn and gives up. The guard turns the scroll slowly, the way you would turn a letter you were not sure you were allowed to read, and then he stamps your papers without looking at them again.

He hands them back through the window. The barrier rises. You drive over the bridge with the sack beside you, and in the mirror the river runs black and curling beneath the arches, carrying the light off in loops that never quite reach the other bank.