Back of a person's neck and shoulders showing a sketchy watercolour-style tattoo of a bow with an orange and yellow wash, and a ribbon running down the spine with script writing on it.

Bow and script ribbon down the upper back

Back · Mixed · Photo

The photograph shows the upper back and neck of a person, seen from behind, with a tattoo of a bow whose loops sit at the top of the neck and whose long tail ribbon runs down the centre of the spine. The bow is drawn with loose black linework, with orange and yellow washes that bleed beyond the outlines, giving a sketched, painterly effect. The ribbon carries small lines of cursive script, and the plain pale skin and light background keep the focus on the tattoo.

Back Neck Bow Ribbon Script Handwriting

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hester, the ribbon you left on the hall table was still there on Tuesday, folded twice around the brass key for Room Seven, so I have kept it in my apron pocket since. Mrs Pargeter says the Whitcombe girls will want it back for the regatta, but they can ask me themselves. The sea has been grey all week and the gulls have got into the bins behind the kitchen.

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I found your letter in the back of the bread drawer. You never were any good at hiding things. The ink has run where the damp got at it, so I could only make out the first lines: 'Do not let them cut the bow from the parcel, it was Mother's, and the knot must stay tied.' I have tied it again the way you showed me, with the loops falling wide, and pinned it to the curtain in the back parlour where the light comes through orange in the evenings.

Mr Lindqvist in the attic asked whose hand wrote the lines running along the tail of it. I said yours, which is half true. He said he would take the room another month if I could find the rest of the sentence. I have looked everywhere. Perhaps the rest is down in the tide line, or in the sea chest under the stairs where Father kept his charts.

Come home when the season closes, and bring the rest of Mother's letter with you. The bow is still tied, and I have not untied it for anyone but you.