Black blackwork tattoo of gothic cathedral spires covering the tops of both feet and the toes.

Gothic cathedral spires across both feet

Blackwork · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A pair of bare feet, cropped above the ankles, is covered in a detailed black tattoo of gothic cathedral spires, towers, arches and domes that climb from the top of the feet onto the toes. The linework is bold and solid, with fine hatching and dotted detail in the stonework and tall tapering spires. The design is entirely black and grey against pale skin and a light background, and the tattoo is centred and symmetrical across both feet.

Blackwork Other Spire Tower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Maud,

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Night shift on Ward 9 has one good window, the one at the end past the sluice, and from it you can see the cathedral. The council changed the floodlights in March, so every spire glows amber until dawn and stands up black against the orange sky like pins in a cushion. Mr Okafor in bed four asked me last night whether they light them for the dead. I told him they light them so the night buses can find the square. He laughed, then coughed for ten minutes, and I held the cardboard bowl while he did.

There were nineteen spires when I started here in September. In November a gale took the tallest pinnacle off the north tower and it came down through the scaffolding like a dropped spoon. Since then the masons have been working in the yard across from the laundry. Their foreman, a quiet man called Bartek who eats his sandwiches standing up, lets me watch from the gate on my break. He has been carving a replacement from pale limestone that smells of wet chalk, and he taps each facet with a mallet as if checking it is telling the truth.

It went up last night, just before four. I stood at the window with my tea going cold and watched the crane swing it over the roofs, slow as a question. Bartek kept his hand flat on the stone the whole way. When it settled into the gap, first light touched the top and the point caught fire, pale gold where the floodlights were only orange. For a minute there were nineteen again, and I could not tell which one was new.

Love, Dorota