Black hand-drawn outline of a bow above the handwritten words 'a girl without a bow is not a girl' on a cream background, shown as a flash-style design.

Bow and handwritten quote design

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A bold black outline drawing of a bow sits above a line of cursive handwriting that reads 'a girl without a bow is not a girl.' The linework is even and uniform, with a few interior strokes shading the centre knot of the bow. The design is black ink on cream paper with no colour and a plain, centred composition.

Lettering Bow Ribbon Quote Handwriting Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the second winter the Halloran Brothers Travelling Circus had nine wagons, one elephant who would no longer climb the ramp, and a ticket booth that sold more raffle tickets than seats. Mother still tied bows. Every morning she sat at the cracked mirror in our caravan, wetted a length of blue satin with her teeth, and knotted it into my hair before I went out to walk the tightrope we had strung between two sycamores behind the feed store.

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The rope was the only thing nobody had bought. Uncle Teddy pawned the drum kit, the calliope went to a man in Hull, and the lion was sent to a sanctuary near Harrogate with a letter that made Mother cry for an afternoon. The crowds never knew how thin the act had become. They came for the sausage rolls and the bearded lady's jam, and they stayed because I wobbled on purpose once, and a farmer's boy shouted, "Go on, then!" as if he had paid for the privilege.

The turn came on a Thursday in Wetherby. The sky was the colour of wet newspaper and the bank manager sat in the front row with his hat on his knee. Halfway across, a gust took my bow clean off and it spun down into the mud. I wanted to climb down. Instead I stood still, the rope humming under my boots, and untied the spare ribbon from my wrist, the one Mother had tied on for luck. I knotted it round the rope itself, then walked the rest of the way like a lady going to church.

Afterwards Mother fished the first bow out of the mud and rinsed it in the water bucket. She looked at the bare rope with its blue ribbon fluttering and said nothing, which for her was the same as applause. Then she went to find the scissors, because the bank manager had left his hat behind and it needed a new band.