Side of a torso showing a botanical tattoo of pink flowers and black swirling leaves around a fine-lined star on the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Floral star tattoo on the ribs

Botanical · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A tattoo on the side of the ribcage shows a fine-lined star made of straight black lines, surrounded by three pink-purple flowers with soft shading and black leafy swirls. The black linework is clean and the flowers are lightly shaded in pink and purple. The tattoo sits centrally in the frame, with a purple bra top above and pink fabric below.

Botanical Geometric Ribs Flower Star Leaves Swirl Floral

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The Gull's Rest had eleven rooms, a cracked bell for breakfast and a rule about tides that Mrs Odell enforced like scripture, so when Mr Tennant came down the stairs at six with his ink-stained cuffs and asked for a pencil, I gave him the stub from behind the register without asking why.

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He was a surveyor for the harbour board, and he spent every evening that August at the kitchen table drawing a wind rose. Straight lines radiated from a single point, eight of them, each one ruled so tight against the oilcloth that the grain of the table showed through. He never finished it. Every morning there were fewer blank spaces, and every morning he scowled at the sea through the scullery window as though it had moved overnight.

On the last Saturday, the frangipani by the bins dropped three flowers onto the step. I brought them in, pressed them between the pages of the tide tables, and when he went out to measure the groyne I laid them where his lines met at the middle. Their pink had already started to brown at the edges. I added small black curls for the leaves, the sort Mrs Odell embroidered on the tea towels, and I left the pencil beside the sugar bowl.

He came back at dusk, read the drawing for a long time, then sat down and began to rule a new line from the flowers out past the edge of the paper. "It points at the kitchen door," he said. "That's no bearing I've ever taken."

"It points at breakfast," I said, and he laughed for the first time all summer, and the bell rang six minutes late.