Compass rose tattoo on a foot

The chart you left on the nail is still there, curling at the corners where the damp gets in. I have not moved it. Mother says a man who sails off without his dividers will come back for them, and I have decided to be the sort of woman who waits for him to do exactly that, though I have been at it so long I am not sure I am any good at waiting.

Yesterday the ferry came in from Oban with the post and the wind backing south-west, and old Ruaridh Gunn stood at the pier end swearing the needle on the binnacle was lying. I showed him the rose I had inked on the back of the tide tables: eight points, the dotted ring for the lesser winds, the little dots between for the half-winds you taught me. He said a compass that agrees with a sailor's knees is no compass at all. I think he meant it kindly.

So here is what I have been working up to. Every evening I draw the rose again, north at the top as you always insisted, and every evening the letters come out crooked. The E leans into its arrow. The W will not stand straight on its own. I am learning that fine lines forgive nothing, and that a true point needs a steady hand more than a clever one.

Tell me the wind is good where you are. Tell me you have not thrown the dividers in the Minch. I will keep the lamp lit at the end of the pier until the spring tide, and after that I will stop, because a light that waits too long is only another way of asking.

Yours, against the wind, Morag