Collage of four black and grey tattoos on a torso: swirling roses on the ribs, a tribal band at the waist, a dotwork mandala on the chest and a feather with script on the lower back.

Four tattoos on ribs, chest and back

Botanical · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

This collage shows four separate photographs of tattoos on the torso. The top left has swirling linework with three shaded roses along the ribs, and the top right has a bold tribal-style band with black solid areas at the side. The bottom left shows a dotwork mandala with geometric petals on the chest, and the bottom right shows a shaded feather with script running alongside it on the lower back. All four are in black and grey ink.

Botanical Blackwork Dotwork Ribs Chest Back Rose Swirl Tribal Mandala Feather Script Floral Geometric Collage

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gull feather came in on the morning tide, snagged in the bow line of the Mary Tallow, and you knew before you worked it free that it belonged to the grey bird that had been screaming over the fish quay since March. You turned it in your palm the way Aunt Bet taught you to read weather, feeling for the weight of it.

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The harbourmaster, Gideon Pryce, wanted it logged with the lost property. He was a sensible man who believed in forms. You told him it was only a feather, and he told you a feather was not a claim, and you said that depended on who was asking. He laughed. Then the rain came in sideways off the breakwater and you both went to see to the pots.

That night you sat on an upturned crate in the net loft with a lamp and a tin of Bet's brown ink, and you wrote the words along the edge of a scrap of canvas, slowly, the way she wrote the tide tables. Then you drew the quill, the shaft, the barbs fanning out like smoke. Your hand shook at the tip. It always did when a line mattered.

In the morning the gull was back on the bollard, watching you with one yellow eye. You held out the feather, and it stepped closer, and for a moment you both pretended it wanted the thing back. It took nothing. It only looked at you, then lifted off the stone, and the feather stayed in your fist, lighter than anything you had ever carried.