Black and grey infinity tattoo with an anchor, rope, two red roses and a script name, placed across the upper back with two swallows above.

Infinity anchor and roses on upper back

Traditional · Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo forms an infinity symbol, with an anchor on the left and a rope-and-vine loop on the right. Two small red roses sit on the loops, and a script name is written along the lower right, with two swallows and a few leaves flying up to the left. The linework is bold and the shading is grey and black, with the red roses providing the only colour against a plain, softly lit back.

Traditional Back Infinity Anchor Rope Rose Swallow Leaves Script Name

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The rain has been coming sideways across the fish market since Tuesday, and the stalls are all shut except Mrs Pryce's, where she sells cockles out of a bucket and charges you for the bucket. I stood under the awning this morning with my collar up and thought about you out past the Dogger, wherever that is on the chart you showed me. Your last letter said the galley smelled of wet wool and the cook had given up on onions.

The swallows came back to the harbour wall on Sunday, three of them, quarrelling over the gutter above the chandler's. Dad would have said they'd crossed the whole sea just to pick a fight. I've been counting them since, though there are only ever two or three, and I keep thinking one of them is you, which is daft.

Mr Haddow at the rope-walk has finished the length you ordered before you sailed. He asked me to bring it down to the quay, and when I went to fetch it in the rain he had laid it out in a loop, the way you drew it for him on the back of the invoice, a figure lying on its side. He said it would hold a boat if the boat had any sense. I told him you'd want it knotted at both ends, so it never ends where it starts.

I'm sending this with the tide and the knot in the same envelope, so you'll have to undo the one to read the other. Don't let the cook have the twine.

Love, Nell