Black lace garter tattoo with a pink ribbon bow wrapped around the outer thigh, shown in a close photograph.

Lace garter and pink bow on a thigh

Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A lace garter design is tattooed around the outer thigh, with dense black linework forming scalloped lace panels. A pink satin-look ribbon bow sits at the lower left of the band, shaded in soft pinks and reds. The photo is taken close up at an angle, with denim shorts visible at the bottom edge and bedding in the background.

Thigh Lace Garter Ribbon Bow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down by the stove, you'll not get the fog out of your coat before Tuesday. My mother made lace in Skerrin Bay for forty years, and she never once let a scallop go out of the house crooked. Each pattern had a name. The one she was proudest of she called the kelp garter, because the loops hung off the edge like weed on a rock at low water, and she worked it in black thread so dense the candle barely got through it.

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The pink ribbon was the only thing she didn't make. A sailor's widow, Mrs Ansell, brought it in a tin with a bow already tied, and asked for it to be stitched onto a band that would go round a bride's arm. My mother said no. Not a single bride in Skerrin would wear a bow the colour of the lamp shade at the point on a Sunday. She kept the ribbon in the drawer under the bobbins, and that is where it stayed for eleven winters.

The year the sea smoke sat on the reef for nine days, the Carrow boat went out for its nets and did not come back by dusk. Sam at the light had the big lamp going, but the fog swallowed it before it reached the water. My mother took the pink ribbon out of the drawer, tied it to the gate at the top of the cliff path, and stood there with her hand on the wet wood until the boat came up the channel, steering for the one bright thing on land that looked like it belonged to somebody.

Mrs Ansell never asked for the ribbon back. My mother said it had only been waiting for a use it had finally found. Every foggy evening after that, the gate got its bow, and I still tie one there when the smoke comes in, though I have never once been able to say what I am waiting for.