Traditional style compass with a star, yellow flowers and pink ribbon banners wrapping around a forearm.

Compass and flowers on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A compass with an eight-point star at its centre is framed by yellow flowers with red centres and green leaves. Pink ribbon banners across the design carry the words "will always" and "find home". Bold black outlines and solid fills of yellow, pink, brown and grey sit against dark wood-grain in the background.

Traditional Forearm Compass Star Flower Ribbon Banner Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas,

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It has rained on the market every Saturday since you left, the kind that drums on the tarpaulins and turns the cobbles to black glass. Mrs Pryce on the flower stall has sold out of marigolds twice and still lets me keep my spare crate of yellow roses under her gazebo, which is how I know she has decided I am not going to fall apart. I have not, mostly. I have been sorting your father's brass instruments into boxes, and the sextant went to a collector from Leeds for more than I expected.

The compass was the last thing I could not price. Its face has the eight-pointed star worn almost smooth at the tips, and the lid still clicks shut as if it is listening for you. The man who wanted it asked whether it still worked. I said it did, though I had only ever checked it on the kitchen table, where it swings north towards the bread bin every time. He laughed and offered double. I told him it was not for sale this week.

So it sits on the shelf above my kettle, lid open, and this morning I noticed the strip of ribbon you had glued inside the box lid when you were nine: FIND HOME, in your wobbly capitals. I had forgotten the other half, which you wrote in biro on the back: WILL ALWAYS. Come home when the sea lets you. The needle is steady. It has never once pointed anywhere but back at the bread bin, and I suppose that is something.

Love, Mum