Black and white photo of a solid black Chicago skyline above four stars and a bar on an upper arm, with the wearer's face not shown.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Chicago skyline and flag stars on an upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and white photograph of a solid black Chicago skyline silhouette above four five-pointed stars and a horizontal bar, a motif taken from the city flag. The tattoo sits on the upper arm of a person with long hair, and their face is not in the frame. The fills are solid black with crisp edges, and the design is centred on the arm against a blurred background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite,

Keep reading

The bridge at Michigan Avenue is up again, so I am writing this in the tender's cabin with the river going brown and slow below me. You asked in your last letter why I never leave the city, and I have never had a good answer, only the view. From here the towers stand up over the water like a row of men who have stopped talking to each other, the tall one with the two spires still first in line, the way Mr Okafor used to point it out to tourists with his umbrella.

Forty-one years I have raised and lowered this span. The boats do not care what the weather is doing. Last Tuesday a grain barge caught its mast in the cables and I had to stand at the lever with my hand shaking while the whole street behind me honked. Nobody honks at a bridge that works. They only notice when it stays down.

The flag hangs on the pole over the cabin, four white stars on a field of blue, with a red bar beneath them. Someone once told me the bar stands for the fire that burned the city down and the people who built it back. I used to think that was tidy history. Now I think the stars are just stubborn, and the bar is where you rest your boots while you wait for the thing to swing back into place.

I am enclosing the drawing I made on the back of the schedule, the skyline Dad taught us to draw. Keep it. When you come home at Christmas we will walk out to the middle and watch the bridge go up together, and you can tell me what the towers look like from Leeds.

Love, Dad

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