Fine line black ink bow tattoo wrapped around a woman's ankle, with bare feet on a dark wooden deck.

Fine line bow tattoo on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

A close view of a woman's bare feet and lower legs standing on dark wooden boards. A small black fine line bow sits on the ankle, with the ribbon ends curving around the skin like an anklet. The shot is taken at night with warm, low lighting, and the tattoo is the clear focal point.

Fine line Ankle Bow Ribbon Anklet Feet

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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

Sit closer, the lot of you, and mind the fire, it has a temper like my brother-in-law. Now, you want the story of the bow. Everyone on this road knows the bow, but none of you know who tied it, so listen.

Keep reading

Out past Caliche Wells there was a ferrywoman named Orla Teague who kept a camel called Dunmow, a stubborn beast with lashes a film star would pay for. Each dusk she tied a length of black ribbon to Dunmow's foreleg so the animal would not wander onto the salt flats in the night. She never tied a plain knot. She made a bow, two loops and two tails, because her mother had told her a bow can be undone by anyone who loves you and by no one else.

One autumn a surveyor came along the road with a theodolite and a pocketful of lies about the new railway. He watched Orla tie that bow every evening and laughed at her. "What's the point of pretty knots in a wasteland?" he asked. She said, "Ask me again when you've tried to leave without one." He did try. He slipped away before she woke, and by noon he was walking in circles among the dunes, reading a compass that spun like a dog after its tail. At dusk, sunburnt and sorry, he came back to the well and found Dunmow standing still, the black bow tight on her leg, both loops holding fast. Orla sat on the step mending a bridle, and she did not look up. "Took you long enough," she said.