Black tribal swirl tattoo running vertically down the side of a person's ribs, above the waistband of dark clothing.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black tribal tattoo on side ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A bold black tribal design with swirling curves and pointed tapering strokes runs vertically along the side of the torso, from below the ribs towards the waist. The solid black linework is smooth and even, with no visible shading, and the pattern is asymmetrical and flows in an S-shaped path. The photograph is taken at an angle against a dark red wall and dark clothing, with a navel piercing visible below the tattoo.

Ribs Tribal Swirl Abstract pattern Curve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gate for Mrs Ottley's garden had to be finished by Friday, and on the Tuesday night before it was still a bar of iron that wouldn't bend the way my drawing said it should. Dad had gone to bed with his chest, so it was just me, the forge coals banked low and the lamp hanging on its nail above the anvil.

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I tried it the old way first, heating the bar to cherry red and drawing it out under the hammer, then folding the tail back on itself. The first curl came out fat and slack, like a cow's tail in a wet field. The second snapped clean through. By midnight there were three tapered points lying in the scale on the floor and a swirl that looked, I thought, like the water below the mill where the river runs fast past the sluice.

At six Mrs Ottley came up the lane with her basket, as she did every morning, and stopped at the yard gate. She said nothing for a long while. Then she told me her husband had worked the same kind of curl into the chapel railings forty years back, and it was the only thing in Hexley he'd ever made that he was proud of. She asked if I'd flipped the drawing. I had. The S ran the wrong way, and it had been running the wrong way all night.

I fixed it before breakfast, heating each point again and turning it against the grain of the first. When Dad came down with his cough and a cup of tea, the gate was standing in the yard, black and loose-limbed, its tails pointing the way the river goes. He looked at it for a long time, touched the top curl with one thick finger, and said nothing at all. That was the most he had ever said about my work.