Two matching black and grey anchor tattoos with bows on a pair of ankles, shaded in a traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Matching anchor and bow ankle tattoos

Traditional · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows two lower legs and ankles side by side, each with an anchor design wrapped in a bow. The linework is dark and bold, with grey shading giving the bows and the anchor shafts depth. The ink is black and grey against lightly tanned skin, and the plain wooden floor and a foot at the top of the frame sit behind the tattoos.

Traditional Ankle Anchor Bow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Marguerite wanted the bow to look as if someone had tied it in a hurry, so Pim at Salt Lane Tattoo drew it three times before she let him ink anything. I sat in the spare chair with tea going cold in a paper cup and watched the transfer paper lift away, leaving the anchor behind in pale grey. "Anchors are for staying put," Pim said, wiping the outline with a green sponge. "Bows are for letting go of something nice." "It's both," Marguerite said through her teeth. "That's the whole point."

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Our fathers had fished out of Porthleven together for thirty years, and neither of them ever mentioned a bow in all that time. Dad's dinghy was called Second Thoughts and he kept it on the same mooring until the year his knees gave out. Marguerite said the anchor was for him and the bow was for Tom, who had proposed on the harbour wall with a ring he'd bought from a pawnshop in Truro and polished on his jumper for a week.

At the wedding in the Harbour Hall, Tom's best man spilled gravy down his trousers and the band played a waltz nobody could dance to. Marguerite stepped over a cable in her heels, hitched her dress, and showed the whole room her ankle. I did the same, a bit slower, and a few people clapped as if we'd done a card trick.

Later we walked the slipway barefoot with our shoes in our hands, the tide turning under the lamps. She said the bow would hold us when the anchor couldn't. I didn't argue. The water came up cold over our toes and neither of us moved.