Two side-by-side photographs of watercolour-style tattoos of the state of Illinois with a heart cut out, labelled Big Sister and Little Sister in script, on skin.

Illinois state outline with heart, big and little sister

Other · Colour · Photo

The image shows two photographs of matching tattoos, each an outline of the state of Illinois filled with a soft purple, blue and teal watercolour wash. A heart shape is left unfilled in the centre of each map, and script reading Big Sister on the left and Little Sister on the right runs alongside. The linework is dark and the colour fades softly into the skin, with some splatter-like marks.

Other State outline Heart Sister Script Watercolour

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The heart was the last thing Tomasz Wenn cut from the map, and he cut it with his wife's sewing scissors because his own knife had gone to the blacksmith in Peoria. Sisters Marit and Hanne watched from the kitchen table, chins on their fists, while the paper state of Illinois dried on the boards. Their mother had asked for the sea-coloured wash: purple where the sky came down to the prairie, blue along the rivers, a teal smear where the lakes lay at the top.

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Hanne was the elder by six winters and had decided the heart belonged to her. Marit, who was four, said nothing for a day. Then she carried the tin of blue paint out to the yard, painted a scrap of offcut sky, and pressed it into the hole as if it might stay. Their father found them asleep on the porch steps, one under the other's arm, the map forgotten under a stone.

Years later the paper went soft at the folds and the sisters went their separate ways: Hanne to the rail yards at Chicago, Marit to a farm past Champaign where the wind never stopped. Each carried a copy in a satchel. When homesick, each held hers to the lamp and looked for the heart, which never faded, because the paint inside it was the only colour the map had not been given.

When Marit finally wrote, she sent no letter, only a single sheet with a square cut out and a pencilled line: the map is yours, I kept the hole. Hanne pinned it above the stove, and every morning the kettle steamed over that blank place until she thought to fill it with a sister's name.