Black lettering reading I refuse to sink wraps around a black anchor with a pink heart, tattooed on the inner forearm.

I refuse to sink anchor on the wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows the words I REFUSE TO SINK in block capitals, arranged around a black anchor whose shank ends in a small solid pink heart. The linework is fairly thin and uneven, with a hand-drawn quality, and the lettering is mostly black with only the heart in colour. The design is centred on pale skin against a blurred light background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dearest Maud, the harbour master has finally let me have the old mooring chain back, so the Gull can ride out the winter at the proper buoy and not bob about off the breakwater like a cork in a bath. You will laugh, but I had the blacksmith's boy file the last link smooth and then I sat in the shed for an hour with a pot of lamp black and a stub of chalk, trying to make the words sit straight along the curve of the flukes. They did not. My letters slope downhill like a drunk man going home, which is why the R looks like it is apologising to the E.

Keep reading

The heart is for you, before you tease me about it. I painted it red-pink from the madder jar you left behind in April, the one you said would never take on tin. It took on the anchor well enough. Father always said a sailor's anchor holds because it is heavy and stubborn, and I have decided that stubbornness is simply a kind of love that refuses to be sensible.

The lighthouse keeper's girl brought the post out this morning in a sack that smelled of tar. Your letter was not in it, so I have decided you are either too busy or too cross, and I shall wait for whichever it turns out to be. Meanwhile the tide has turned and the Gull is swinging gently on her new mooring. I am told that is what anchors are for. I have stopped arguing with the harbour master about it.

Your loving and slightly crooked Tom.

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