Black and grey tattoo of stars cascading diagonally across the side ribs, with the largest star shaded to look three-dimensional.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cascading stars on a side ribcage

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of five-pointed stars in graduated sizes tracing a diagonal line down the side of a torso against a black background. The stars are outlined and mostly solid black, with the largest star shaded to look dimensional. Only black ink and grey tones appear, with a black studded waistband along the bottom edge of the frame.

Ribs Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stars came down the sky at a slant, the way Dad always said they did, not straight but leaning, as if they had somewhere to be by morning. You stood on the wet path at the bottom of the allotment with a torch you had forgotten to switch on, and watched the first one drop behind the Co-op roof.

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Behind you the greenhouse ticked as it cooled. Dad had taught you to count them the way you counted runner beans, by size, smallest first: the pinprick ones that barely held their shape, then the middling ones, then the big one over the water tower that took its time. He had shaded that last star in pencil on the back of a seed catalogue, pressing so hard the lead shone, and told you it was the one that stayed behind to keep the others honest. At nine you thought that was nonsense. You were forty-one now and still counted in the same order.

Tonight there were five on the slope and one gone out from the bottom of the row, the one nearest the ground, and you could not say whether it had fallen or simply stopped. You picked up the trowel from the bench, dug a small hole beside the leeks where the soil was soft, and set the torch in it face up so its light climbed the dark like a stalk. Then you walked home and wrote the date in the allotment book, under the sowing dates, and beside it you put a single pencilled star.