Realistic blue laced-up shoe tattoo with metal eyelets and a bow wrapping around the ankle, shown on a bare foot against a dark background.

Laced-up shoe tattoo on an ankle

Realism · Ankle · Colour · Photo

A bare foot shows a trompe l'oeil tattoo of a shoelace threaded through a column of metal eyelets, finished with a bow at the top near the ankle. The lace and eyelets are shaded with soft highlights and cast shadows to create a three-dimensional effect, with the lace in blue and the eyelets in gold and grey. The foot fills the frame on a dark textured backdrop, with the tattoo running from the ankle down towards the toes.

Realism Ankle Bow Lace Shoe Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lace has come undone again by the time the barge clears Teddington, and Mr Harrow leans on the tiller and says nothing, which is his way of saying it is your fault. You kneel on the wet deck with the boot across your knee and feed the blue lace back through the brass eyelets, one pair at a time, the way your mother taught you on the kitchen step in Kingston. Under and over, under and over, pulling each cross snug so the leather never gapes against the wind off the water.

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Nobody aboard the Second Wind ties a bow on a working boot, but Harrow's daughter sent these up from town, stiff with new polish, and the bow is the only fine thing you have ever owned that wasn't stolen from a rope locker. You tie it tight at the top, then loosen it a half turn, because a knot pulled too hard will shear the thread at the first lock gate. Harrow watches from the wheelhouse window with his pipe gone cold. He has never once pulled a line with his bare hands when he could ask you to do it.

At Molesey the lock keeper bellows down that the water is low and the top gate sticks. You step onto the slimy sill in your sound boots and the lace holds. Nothing gives. When the gates groan apart and the barge drops into the green dark, Harrow comes down the companion steps and ties the bow loose again for you, though you never asked him to. You stand a moment in the spray with the sluice roaring below, neither of you willing to say that you are both just waiting to see who will mend it next time.