Cancer zodiac ribcage and crab flash

Black and grey · Flash

A black and grey line drawing shows a ribcage and spine with a crab claw hanging beneath it, set in front of a faint outlined rosette with a flower at its centre. Fine hatching and stippling shade the ribs and the crab's body, with small rays drawn below the claw. The word CANCER and a three-line verse sit in the lower third on a plain white background.

Ribcage Crab Claw Flower Rosette Zodiac Spine Sun rays

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The crabs came up from the Pharos rocks in baskets lined with wet reed, and by the time the sun cleared the lighthouse shadow they were already crossing the stall floor sideways, as if they had somewhere better to be. My job was to gut the mullet. Aunt Phaidra said a boy with clean hands earned his bread twice, so I kept my knife honed and my eyes on the spine of each fish, slitting, lifting, scraping until nothing soft was left in the pan.

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Old Menas sold the shellfish at the far end of the market, and he kept one crab apart from the rest. It was missing a claw and sat in a bronze bowl under a sheet of mica, so the lamplight came through in thin bars and it might believe it was night. Every morning he tapped the rim with his ring and said, "Emptied out, but still talking," and the crab clicked its good pincer against the metal like a coin dropped on a table. I thought him a fool until the afternoon a potter's dog slipped its rope and went for the bowl.

Karkinos caught the dog's lip in that one remaining claw and held on while the animal ran the length of the quay, yelping, the bowl rattling after it on its string. Menas laughed until he had to sit on an upturned crate. That evening, when the stall was swept, I laid the cleaned mullet skeletons out on a tin plate in a ring, and the last lamp threw their shadows outward like spokes. In the bowl the crab moved again, its claw knocking softly. I understood then that a body can be opened and scraped and still keep a mouth, and that the mouth is the part that does not get sold.