Black line drawing of an infinity symbol whose right loop is filled with silhouettes of the Hawaiian islands, shown on a plain white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Infinity symbol with Hawaiian islands

Black and grey · Flash

A solid black infinity symbol drawn as a single smooth, even line on a white background. The right-hand loop of the symbol is formed by a cluster of island silhouettes resembling the main Hawaiian islands, with the largest island at the far right. The composition is centred and simple, with no shading or added colour.

Infinity symbol Island Map Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The chart had been folded so often that the islands wore through at the creases, and Auntie Lani would not let anyone trace over them in ink. 'Read it by the lamp,' she said, 'not by the screen. The screens lie about distance.' I was nineteen and had never seen a sea that didn't rise and fall by a tidal clock, so I did what I was told and bent over the paper.

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The drawing was an eight lying on its side, one loop of open water and the other chained with islands, the largest one furthest east like a fist closing. Lani tapped the ring of sea where the two loops met. 'You don't sail the figure, you sail the crossing. Every current out here runs back on itself. Leave the western side of Kauai and the trade winds will carry you round the bottom of the Big Island and up again, if your hands are patient.'

We sailed in the spring the reef towns went under, six of us in a double-hulled boat with a patched sail and a water tank that smelled of rust. We went round the loop three times. On the second pass the fish were thinner and the birds were gone, and I began to think Lani had drawn a trap rather than a map. On the third, a boy from the Molokai crew pointed at a sandbar that had not been on the chart, and Lani laughed until she had to sit down.

'It was never a circle,' she said, 'it only looks like one from the land. Every time you come back you are a little further along the line.' She unfolded the chart and ran her thumb over the join where the loops crossed. Then she refolded it along the crease and pressed it into my hands. 'Your turn to keep the lamp lit.'