Fine line tattoo of a state outline with a small red dot and the word home in script, on the side of a ribcage in a Fine line style.

Fine line state outline with script home on ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A single unbroken black fine line traces the outline of a US state, with a small red dot inside its western edge and the word home in cursive script beside it. The linework is thin and even, with the lettering sitting within the outline. Black ink dominates, with only the small red dot adding colour, against smooth skin on the side of the torso.

Fine line Lettering Ribs State outline Map Dot Home Script

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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

The patient in bed nine asks for a pen at ten past three, which is the hour when nobody asks for anything sensible. You bring a biro from the medication trolley and a clean sheet from the observation pad, and she tells you to stop hovering and sit down, Nurse, because her hands are not what they were and she is going to need the time.

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She draws the shape of her state from memory, one long unbroken line that wanders out and doubles back on itself. The pen skips at the corners. Near the western edge she stops, taps the paper twice with the cap, and says that's where the Halvorsens used to keep their horses, though the Halvorsens are long gone and so are the horses. You ask which way the wind blows out there. She says it doesn't blow, it leans.

She uncaps a red felt tip and presses it into the paper, and you hear the small squeak of it through the quiet ward. Then she writes the word beside the outline in careful looping script, the letters running almost to the edge and curling back in. She holds the sheet up to the light from the corridor as if it might need checking. It is the most even line you have seen all night.

When the early tea trolley rattles past she asks you to fold the sheet into quarters and keep it somewhere dry, not in the bin with the charts. You tuck it into your breast pocket, and at handover you find you can still feel its corner pressing, a small hard edge that keeps pointing west.