Small black fine line tattoo of a dotted constellation with star points on the side of a ribcage, above a grey draped fabric.

Dotted constellation on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small, dotted constellation of connected star points is tattooed on the side of the ribs, forming an angular line that runs from lower left to upper right. The linework is fine and the ink is solid black, with no shading or colour. The tattoo sits centrally in the frame against smooth skin, with grey patterned fabric draped across the left and bottom edges.

Fine line Ribs Constellation Star Dot Line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The lodger in number nine has finally gone, and he left the ceiling as he found it, which is to say pricked all over with pinholes. Mr Orme came in October with a tin trunk and a brass sextant he would not let the maid dust. Every night he climbed onto the washstand with a box of tacks and a ball of red thread, and by the end of the week he had fixed the same handful of stars that the lamplighter swore were the bones of a fishing hook. I told him the best parlour was no place for the heavens. He said the heavens had never been asked.

On his last night he knocked on my door with the sextant under his arm and asked whether I could hold the thread. I thought he wanted a lamp hung. Instead he stood on the bed and pressed the tacks into the plaster one after another, calling out a name for each. He had not used anything from the almanac. He named them for the people who had walked him from the station to the tram: a porter with one good eye, a girl selling oranges, a grey dog that followed us all the way to the cliff. The line ran from the lamp shelf down toward the window. I asked why the last star sat so far from the rest. He said it was the one he had not yet been able to walk to.

He left on the early train towards Carlisle, and the room smells of wet wool and brass polish. I haven't taken the pins out. Come home at Easter and count them yourself. I make it nine, though I may have got the dog wrong.

Your loving sister, Ada