Small black silhouettes of four figures in flight, arranged in a diagonal line across the ankle in a fine line style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Flying silhouettes on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

Four small solid black silhouettes of figures in mid-air trail diagonally up the ankle, decreasing in size from the lowest figure to the highest. The shapes are simple, with no internal detail, and the crisp black ink stands out clearly against pale skin. The ankle and a white canvas shoe are shown against a light wooden floor, with the tattoo placed in the centre of the frame.

Fine line Geometric Ankle Silhouette Flying figure Figure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The band finishes a Lindy number and the floor at the Palais Verde in Margate is still steaming, so nobody sees you climb the bandstand steps with your shoes in your hand. Lenny Hobbs on the drums counts you in with two fingers and a grin. You are seventeen, you learnt the lift from a Wednesday class above a chip shop, and tonight you intend to do it where the whole hall can watch.

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Desmond has never once let you fall. He swings you out, the crowd goes quiet, and then his hands find your waist and you go up. The first jump is only a hop. The second is higher, the way a kite climbs when the wind finally finds it, and for one held breath the stage lights catch the gap between you and the boards. You understand that a person can be drawn across the air as neatly as ink on paper.

Afterwards, in the cloakroom, Desmond asks how you got that high. You shrug and say Mrs Quayle taught you to keep your knees loose and your eyes on the ceiling. You don't mention the photograph by the bar, the one of the 1951 champions frozen mid-leap, four of them strung diagonally across the wall, each figure a little smaller than the one before, as if they are climbing out of the frame.

On your way out you stop beside it. Someone has pinned a new print at the very end of the row, a girl with her arms flung wide and her feet already off the floor. Nobody has written her name underneath, so you take the pencil from behind the bar and do it yourself, then walk out into the rain with resin gritty on your palms.