Black and grey bow tattoo with shaded loops and trailing ribbon ends on the lower back of a woman in dark jeans, seen from behind.

Bow tattoo on the lower back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A small bow with shaded loops and two trailing ribbon ends sits on the lower back, centred on the spine. The linework is soft and the grey shading gives the ribbon folds some depth. The photograph is taken from behind with a purple-tinted filter, and the subject's hair and waistband of dark jeans frame the tattoo.

Realism Back Bow Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ewes were down in the bottom field by the time the frost came off the troughs, and Dad had already gone up the top road in the pickup, so it was me who found the first dead lamb of the year. It lay half under the hawthorn with its mother nosing at it, and I knelt in the wet straw with my gloves off, which Gran would have scolded me for, and tried to think what she would have done.

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She would have gone to the tack room. Her ribbon tin lived on the shelf above the feed bins, an old biscuit tin gone soft at the corners, and inside were forty years of rosettes and the narrow satin strips that came off the show cups. Every lamb she had saved, she had tied a ribbon round the ewe's neck so the next shepherd would know to leave them be. I took the red one from the top and knotted it at the ewe's throat the way she'd shown me, pulling the two ends long until they hung down like tails.

The surviving twin was a tiny thing, shivering against the hedge. I carried it up to the kitchen inside my coat, where the range ticked and the kettle sang, and wrapped it in an old towel by the fire. Dad came in at dusk, saw the red ribbon through the window, and said nothing for a long time.

Next morning the frost had made lace on the gate. I went down with the tin and tied a bow on the post where the dead lamb had lain, looping it double the way Gran did, and left the ends to lift in the wind. Dad stood beside me with his hands in his pockets and said, very quietly, that she'd have liked that. I didn't answer. I just pulled the knot tight.