Flash design of a compass rose on a teal world map, framed by branches, flowers, leaves, rope, a fish, a bird and an anchor, in a botanical style.

Compass rose with anchor, bird and botanical wreath

Botanical · Colour · Flash

A compass rose with the letters N, E, S and W sits over a pale teal map of the world. A wreath of twisting branches, leaves and peach flowers surrounds it, with a rope running down to an anchor at the bottom left, a bird at the top right and a fish on the right edge. The linework is fine and hand-drawn in dark brown ink, with soft shading and muted teal, peach and ochre washes on a cream background.

Botanical Compass Compass rose Anchor Bird Flower Branches Leaves Rope Fish World map

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You come back to Porthmellow on the Thursday bus, the one that still stops outside the chapel because nobody has ever told the driver it is no longer a stop. Your mother has written the rope letters into the hall mat again, the way she did when you were nine and kept leaving the back gate unlatched. The anchor you carried off the Sennen tender in 1951 is still propped by the scullery door, furred with rust, and you tell yourself you will sand it before tea.

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What you cannot tell her is that the compass in your coat pocket has stopped pointing north. It swings, lazily, toward the window where the gulls work the bins, and it has done that since Naples. The jeweller in Liverpool said the spring had gone, and you let him keep the brass for a fortnight, and then you took it back unmended because it seemed to know something you did not.

On the Saturday you walk the cliff path with the dog and find the bird again, a white dove or perhaps a gull that has forgotten its manners, perched on a blackthorn that no one planted. Under it the wind has pulled a skein of bramble into a loose ring, and inside the ring the ground is painted with small peach blooms, all facing the same way. You kneel and look. The sea has the colour of old tea and the map of the world seems to lie flat across the grass, and for once you are not afraid of where it points.

You go down the steps to the cove and lay the compass face up on the wet sand. The needle shivers, then settles, pointing straight at the empty bay where the boats used to turn. You sit with it until the tide comes in, and you do not wind it again.