Black outline tattoo of a large bow, heart-shaped lock, planetary symbols and keys on the side of the ribs, in fine line style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bow, heart lock and keys outline on ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a large outlined bow with a heart-shaped lock at its centre, a vertical chain of planetary and astrological symbols, and two keys with heart-shaped bows, one ending in a faceted gem. The linework is a single black outline with no shading or fill, and the design runs diagonally down the side of the torso. The image is in black ink only, with the skin tone and the design's clean outline clearly visible against the background.

Fine line Ribs Bow Heart Lock Key Gem Chain

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Okonedo never sold the bow box, though everyone on Cable Street asked. It sat in the back window of her repair shop behind a card that read NOT FOR SALE in biro: a silver heart with a bow of black ribbon, its hinge gone stiff with forty years of damp. Her nephew Tobi said it was a jewellery box. She said it was a lock, and locks were only ever sold by people who had forgotten what they kept.

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The chain came with it, seven links stamped with the old planetary signs. Mars with its arrow, Venus with her little mirror, a crescent that Tobi swore was a question mark. Each loop was no bigger than a grain of rice. When Tobi was twelve he tried to coax the heart open with a hairpin and it bit him, a thin cold pinch at the thumb that left a mark like the teeth of a key. She wrapped the cut in blue cloth and did not scold him, because he had not been trying to steal anything. He had only wanted to see.

Years later, when her hands shook too much for fine work, she gave him the two keys. One had a heart for a head and the other a bow, and from the bit of each hung a gem cut in so many faces that it caught the shop lamp and threw it across the ceiling in pieces. "Seven doors," she said, "and the gem is for the last one, the one you will not want to open." He asked what was behind it. She laughed and said that was the first thing the lock had taught her: nobody asks what lies behind a door until the key is already turning.

Tobi took the keys down to the harbour the week after she died. He tried the first link at the pier's end, where the tide came in grey and quick, and the heart gave with a sound like a held breath let go. Inside was only a folded map of Cable Street, every shop marked with a small cross, and his own shop's cross was the only one still drawn in ink.