Two matching forearm tattoos show a grey shaded anchor wrapped in rope, with a teal bow and the word sisters in script beneath.

Matching anchor and bow forearm tattoos

Neo-trad · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Two forearms display near-identical tattoos of an anchor wrapped in rope, with a teal bow tied around the shank and the word sisters written in script along the rope. The anchor and rope are rendered in soft grey shading with highlights, while the bow has smooth teal shading. The two arms sit side by side against a dark top and blue denim, with the tattoos centred in each frame.

Neo-trad Lettering Forearm Anchor Rope Bow Script Sister

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lifeboat station at Porthkerris kept its radio on the windowsill, and Maud Tregarthen had never once known it to be quiet. That morning it was muttering about a trawler off the Lizard, and her sister Jenny was standing at the chart table with a teal ribbon wound round two fingers, trying to tie it without looking.

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"Hold still, you'll make it crooked," Maud said, taking the ends from her. Jenny had been the one who wanted the anchor. Maud had wanted something sensible, like a compass. But Jenny had drawn it on the back of a fish receipt, rope coiled round the shank and the word sisters looping down the length like a line someone had let slip, and that had been the end of the argument.

The bow came out lopsided. They laughed at it, which was the first time either of them had laughed since the funeral. Then the radio crackled and the coxswain's voice came through, flat and steady, asking for every hand on the slip.

They ran. Out on the grey water the trawler's light was tilting, and the sea was doing what the sea did in March. Maud hauled on a line that burned her palms while Jenny fed out the bow rope, her knuckles white, shouting numbers into the wind. When the crew came off the boat one at a time, soaked and swearing, Maud counted them twice, then a third time, just to be sure.

Later, at the kitchen table, Jenny pushed up her sleeve and showed her the ink, still pink at the edges. "Same as yours," she said. "Only mine's got the knot slightly wrong." Maud took her wrist, turned it toward the lamp, and said nothing, because nothing needed saying. The anchor held, and so did they.