Traditional flash design of playing cards showing a heart, spade, club and diamond above a banner reading LUCKY, with an orange flower and dark leaves below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lucky playing cards and banner flash

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A drawing of four playing cards fanned out behind a cream ribbon banner that reads LUCKY. Bold black outlines define the cards, leaves and flower, with flat red, orange and black fills on a cream background. The composition is symmetrical and centred, with the banner sitting across the lower half of the cards and the flower and leaves anchoring the base.

Traditional Playing card Banner Heart Spade Club Diamond Flower Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, I owe you a shilling and a better account than the one I gave at Mum's wake. The back room at the Lantern on Cubitt Wharf still smells of wet wool and tallow, and the sign above the card table still reads LUCKY in cream letters with black edges, because nobody has the heart to paint over the thing Dad hung there the year before the flood.

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On Thursday I sat across from Ferris Obi, who deals as if he is stroking a cat. He had the spades fanned out in front of him like a black hand of cards, and I had two pairs hidden under my thumb. The pot was everything Mum left us: the barge, the cutters, the good coat. I kept my face still the way Dad taught us, looking at the banner rather than at Ferris, reading LUCKY over and over until the letters stopped meaning anything and became only shapes, cream and black, with the orange flower at the base catching the lamplight.

I didn't win. I folded with a pair of diamonds and a nerve I didn't know I had, and Ferris laughed and pushed the pot back across the felt without even counting it. He said a sign is only paint until someone believes it. I said it was never a promise, just a ribbon with some flowers on it, something to look at while the cards went round.

So I'm coming home on the Tuesday tide with the barge and the coat. Keep the kettle on. I threw the good deck off the stern on the way past the locks, and the gulls can have what's left of it. Your loving sister, Win.