Black silhouette of a girl reaching for a red heart balloon, tattooed on the side of the lower abdomen above jeans.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Girl with heart balloon silhouette on hip

Other · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a solid black silhouette of a young girl in a dress, reaching up towards a single red heart-shaped balloon on a thin line. The silhouette is filled with flat black ink with crisp edges, and the red heart is the only colour in the design. The small motif sits on bare skin above the waistband of jeans and black underwear, with plenty of empty space around it.

Other Girl Silhouette Balloon Heart

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have been told not to lean over the cabin roof, so naturally you lean. The barge Constance noses into the lock at Brentford with her fenders squeaking against the brickwork, and on the towpath a man is selling balloons from a bunch tied to the railings. The red one is the only heart in the bunch. Your mother says it costs a shilling you have not got, so you raise your hand anyway, as if reaching might be enough.

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Your brother Desmond, who is eleven and already thinks himself a sailor, is holding the mooring line. A gust comes off the water and the seller's fingers open. The balloon rises straight at you, bobbing over the gate, a red heart on a string as thin as cotton. You jump for it from the gunwale. Your fingers close on air, then on the string, and then your father is shouting and the string runs hot across your palm until you let it go.

The lock fills. The barge lifts with the water and you lift with it, and the heart keeps climbing above the poplars until it is only a red full stop on the sky. Your father wraps your hand in a handkerchief that smells of paraffin and says nothing for a long time. You think he is cross with you. Then he tells you the river never gives back what it takes, but it does let you watch where things go.

The gates swing open. You stand on the roof with your hand still raised, though the balloon is gone and the sky is empty, and the water carries you on towards London. Your palm keeps the shape of the string for days.