Blue-grey compass rose tattoo with N, E, S and W lettering in script, placed centrally on a person's upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose tattoo on upper back

Fine line · Back · Colour · Photo

A compass rose sits at the centre of the upper back, with a star-shaped rose of eight-pointed blades around a small central circle. The needlework is fine and linear, with shaded blades and a light wash of blue-grey ink. Script N, E, S and W letters mark the cardinal points, and the design is centred on soft, even skin with a blurred hairline at the top edge.

Fine line Back Compass Compass rose North South East West

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The chart table in the back cabin of the Marian Vale still smells of pine oil, and I have not yet found the courage to scrub it. Your mother would have laughed at me for that. She always said I loved the boat more than the water. Maybe I do. Maybe that is why I have spent three nights sitting here with the brass compass unscrewed from its bracket, turning it over in my hands like a stone I picked up on a beach and cannot put down.

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The man at the chandlery in Falmouth sold me a new one for twelve pounds, and I told him the old one was for my daughter. He did not ask why I had come to him with a face like that. He only wrapped it in newspaper and said the north on that dial was sound. I believe him. The needle still swings true. It is the rest of me that wanders.

What I want you to know, before the tide turns and I go out past the breakwater alone, is that I drew a rose on the back of the chart. Eight blades, each one shaded in grey-blue with the side of a pencil, the way the old navigators used to rule them. I labelled the four points in my best copperplate, N, E, S, W, and I sat looking at it until the lamp guttered. Every cardinal point was written down. None of them told me which way home was.

So I am taking the chart. I will sail east until the light changes, and if I come back, I will bring you the rose.