Black fine line tattoo of an outlined heart with a cross above it and a looping line crossing the heart, on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Heart and cross on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows an outlined heart with a tall cross rising from its upper right edge, and a looping stroke that crosses over the left side of the heart and extends below it. The linework is dark, single-stroke and of fairly even weight, with no shading or fill. The photograph is taken close up on pale skin, with the design centred and the surrounding skin softly out of focus.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Cook says the bread will not rise in this weather, and I believe him, because nothing aboard has risen since Gibraltar. I am writing on the back of the cold-store manifest, Maud, so forgive the smudges. The galley is the only dry corner forward, and the stove still gives heat if you sit close enough to be scolded for it.

Keep reading

Yesterday the bosun's mate brought me a length of tarred line that had parted at the splice and asked if I could put a whipping on it that would hold. I told him a whipping is a kind of promise, and promises do not hold at the first knot. He laughed, and I did it anyway while the pot boiled over. When the ends were tight I drew a little heart on the slate where we keep the mess count, and beside it a cross with its foot standing on the heart's upper edge, like a bearing mark on a chart. The rope I let loop over the left side of the heart and drop below it, the way a line falls off a yard when nobody has the hands to haul it in.

The second mate saw the slate and asked what the sum was supposed to be. I said it was our position. He took it for a joke and went off muttering about dinners. I did not explain that I had been thinking of your kitchen, where you always set the cross on the sideboard above the heart, so that whoever came in from the wet would see it first.

When we make the Tagus I will walk the rope off the rail and tie it to the bollard myself. Keep the kettle on. I will smell of tar and bread, and I will find my way home by the cross pointing north of the heart.

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