Black and grey fine line script reading Family with a small anchor beneath it, on the inner wrist of a raised hand.

Family script and anchor on wrist

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a hand raised toward the top of the frame, showing a tattoo on the inner wrist. The tattoo is the word Family in flowing script with a small anchor drawn beneath the lettering. The linework is thin and dark, with no shading or colour, and the background is a dark, softly lit surface.

Lettering Fine line Hand Family Anchor Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The anchor came up on the third heave, streaming weed and a rusted tin of Woodbines, and Dad swore at it the way he swore at everything that wasn't his. I was twelve and holding the rope. Mum stood on the quay in her green coat, counting the boats out past the breakwater the way she had every morning since Grandad went down with the Sheila Rose.

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We didn't talk about the trawler at tea. We talked about the price of diesel and whether the Dogger would blow up by the weekend. Dad said the word family the way other men said amen, once, at the end of a sentence, then went back out to the nets with his hands gone white at the knuckles.

Three weeks later the Mary Ellen came in a man short. I ran the length of the pontoon with the shore box under my arm, and Dad wasn't aboard her. What I found instead was his knife, folded, lying on the wet deck beside a coil of line tied in Grandad's bowline, the tail tucked twice the way he'd taught us both. Mum picked up the knife and said nothing. She made the line fast to the cleat, hauled it taut, and told me to hold the other end.

I still hold it. Every morning I stand where Dad used to stand and count the boats out past the breakwater, and every morning the number comes up one short. I tie the line off again anyway, and wait for the tide to turn.