Colour tattoo of an embracing couple in a blue floral panel on the side of the ribs, with a hand resting on the skin above.

Embracing couple in a patterned panel on the ribs

Ribs · Colour · Photo

A rectangular panel tattoo on the side of the ribcage shows two embracing figures, one with dark hair and closed eyes, set against a dense blue ground of pink and green floral motifs and swirling scrolls. The linework is smooth and the shading is soft, with flat areas of colour and light skin tones left as negative space. The panel is centred on the ribs and fills the frame vertically, with a hand resting on the upper skin and a patterned jacket framing the image.

Ribs Embrace Couple Floral pattern Swirl Pink

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ilse Varga had dipped cloth in the indigo vats at Hallow Mill for thirty-one years, and she had never once been asked to dye a panel that would be sewn inside a bride's coat. The commission came by letter from a Mr Tobias Lowe, who wanted the lining of his daughter's wedding coat to show two people holding each other in a field of blue flowers, with pink blossoms where the eye would land first.

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She drew it on squared paper at the kitchen table, the way her mother had taught her. The man's hand cupped the back of the woman's head, and the woman's face was turned into his shoulder, so that neither of them had to look at the room. She left the skin bare, a pale shape held against the dark ground, and filled everything else with scrolls that curled like sea spray and leaves that folded over into one another. It took three weeks to get the blue right. The first dips came out too bright, like a school uniform, and she had to let them sit overnight in the cool room until they settled into the colour of a sky just after the sun has gone.

Nell, the daughter, came to the mill the afternoon before the wedding to see the finished panel. She stood a long time over the table and asked why the two of them had their eyes shut. Ilse wiped her hands on her apron and said that a person kissing with their eyes open was still keeping an eye on the room.

The coat went to the church in March. Ilse did not go. A fortnight later a postcard arrived with a photograph of the lining turned out in the sunshine on a garden bench, the hems gone nearly black where the rain had reached them. Underneath, in biro, someone had written: they're still holding on.